


Never Yield to Force

by rainaftersnowplease



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Functional Alcoholic Lena Luthor, Is it Cute? Is it Sexy? Is it OSHA-Compliant?, Lena Luthor Finds Out Kara Danvers is Supergirl, but the story is quite different, that's mostly a joke but there's quite a bit of drinking, the arcs you will remember
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27003616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainaftersnowplease/pseuds/rainaftersnowplease
Summary: “And what about you, Ms. Danvers? I didn’t see your name on the byline."You fix her with a stare, interested because you are. You didn’t come here to make friends, but associates in the press are always an asset. And if those assets are also blonde, and cute, and staring at you open-mouthed as though they’ve never seen a woman before, well.So much the better.ORScrambled Season 2 re-write in which Lena Luthor deserves better, and I'm going to give it to her.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 183
Kudos: 563





	1. Chapter 1

You’re supposed to be on the Venture launch.

You’re looking forward to it, in fact. You worked on the oscillator tech yourself, months of labor deep in a lab, coming in and leaving without the sun in the sky. The first suborbital commercial spacecraft in human history, and Luthor Corp tech is a part of it.

It’s a small step, but one you’re very happy to take.

But things work out for you so neatly only very occasionally, and they don’t this time. Instead you get a call in the early morning on launch day from your frantic assistant, who’s at work at – you squint at your bedside table – three in the morning because there was a problem in one of the underground labs that she thought she could handle herself.

“I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” you tell her.

You’ve only been asleep for a few hours as it is, and you click your coffee pot on from your phone before you get dressed. If you lean against the bathroom sink for a few moments to will the bags under your eyes to shrink before making up your face, there’s no one else in your house to catch you at it.

It takes you all of four hours to solve the issue with the weird power cells your brother left behind, and you make a mental note to go over them in more detail before another of them starts to overheat. But you miss the launch. It turns out to be a mixed blessing.

The shuttle explodes mid-flight, hurtles towards earth on literal fire until Superman and Supergirl guide it down to a softer landing. You watch from your office computer and shake your head when it’s done.

And you start preparing for the inevitable.

You come into the office a bit later on purpose, so you can walk Clark Kent back to your desk rather than waiting for him like the supervillain he wants you to be.

“There’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why I wasn’t aboard the Venture yesterday,” you tell him and his colleague, leading them around the corner to your office.

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” he returns. And when you turn to look at him, there’s a smile on his handsome face that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. You raise your chin a bit before you can stop yourself, take a breath, and turn to hang up your coat. You don’t give him the full truth. _Local Luthor has overloading power cells in the basement_ isn’t something Clark Kent will find exculpatory.

“There was an emergency regarding the planning for a ceremony I'm holding tomorrow. I'm renaming my family's company, and I had to cancel.”

“Ah, lucky,” Kent says. He’s not a great liar. His eyes crinkle in what might be fondness on anyone else. You see only scorn there.

You go for disarmament, laughing sweetly.

“Lucky is Superman saving the day.”

That pinches his eyes in something like suspicion. You lean back against your desk to show openness but can’t help crossing your arms over your chest, flexing your fingers against your bicep. Clark Kent smiles with blue-eyed ease, a piece of his silky black hair falling into his face. You swear he’s done it on purpose, creating that disheveled-chic look that you’re sure other girls go wild for.

It makes you want to grind your teeth.

“Not something one expects a Luthor to say.”

You flex your jaw to keep from clenching your teeth at him.

“Right. And Supergirl was there too!”

That’s his colleague, and you stare at Clark Kent a moment longer before you avert your gaze to address her. When you do, fixing her with a glare she probably doesn’t deserve just for standing next to him, she flushes, big blue eyes wide behind her glasses and mouth hanging open. It’s adorable.

“And who are you, exactly,” you ask. There’s a twitch in your mouth that feels too close to a smile.

“Um,” she says. Snaps her mouth shut and adjusts her glasses with two fingers. “I’m Kara Danvers. I’m not with the _Daily Planet_ – I’m with _CatCo Magazine_.”

She pauses, just a beat.

“Sort of.”

You laugh at that, looking her over again. Pink shirt, peach blazer, blonde hair pinned back in a low bun. That tracks. A baby Cat Grant, but with none of the claw, it seems.

“That’s a publication not known for its hard-hitting journalism,” you let her up from under your gaze. Clark Kent is still staring daggers at you behind his stupid Kansas smile and the power position you’re in is probably a bad one to speak to him in, so you walk around your desk and sit in front of them both instead.

“More like ‘ _high-waisted jeans, yes or no?’_ ”

“I’m just tagging along today,” she shrinks back behind Kent, which reminds you that he’s in the room at all. You smile thinly, feeling suddenly off-kilter.

“Right,” you hedge to right your brain until you can look at him again without open derision. “Can we just speed this interview along? Just ask me what you want to, Mr. Kent. Did I have anything to do with the Venture explosion?”

He looks down, but it’s not in any honest humility. You don’t trust him, Clark Kent. You can’t. And you know he doesn’t trust a thing you say.

“Did you?”

“You wouldn’t be asking me if my last name was Smith,” you say. A jab, a small one. Kent isn’t deterred.

“Ah, but it’s not. It’s Luthor,” he laughs, but his gaze is hard.

“Some steel under that Kansas wheat,” you smile at him. He smiles back. It reaches a little farther up his face, still not quite to the eyes. Behind him Kara Danvers looks between the two of you quickly, frowning.

You wonder what she sees.

You turn to face the window, contemplative, deciding.

And you decide to throw Clark Kent a bone.

“Wasn’t always,” you say. “I was adopted when I was four.”

You turn back to Clark Kent, and sharpen the bone into a sword.

“And the person who made me feel most welcome in the family was Lex. He made me proud to be a Luthor.”

You shrug, drop the weapon and regard Kent openly, innocently. A game you’ve been practicing for years.

“And then he went on his reign of terror in Metropolis. Declared war on Superman. Committed unspeakable crimes.”

This is all true, and you let it color the words angry, as you still are with Lex. It puts Clark on the defensive, his face finally looking abashed. Your eyes flit to Kara Danvers behind him, and you find her sad. You look again, to reconfirm. Let out a breath and continue.

“When Superman put Lex in jail, I vowed to take back my family’s company. To re-name it L-Corp. Make it a voice for good. I’m just a woman trying to make a name for herself outside her family. Can you understand that?”

“Yeah,” says Kara Danvers, stepping next to Kent. No more wide blue eyes now, they’re clear and focused for a second. You hold her gaze and she doesn’t look away. And you smile at that.

“I know why you’re here. Because a subsidiary of my company made the part that exploded on the Venture,” you say to her. You get up from your desk, striding to the wall of shelves across the room and plucking the USB drive you’d prepared that morning from its holster. Turning, you hand it to Clark Kent with a nod and a smile.

“This drive contains all the information we have on the oscillator. I hope it helps with your investigation.”

Clark nods and frowns, closes his fingers around the drive. You hold it steady, then hold his gaze.

“Give me a chance, Mr. Kent. I’m here for a fresh start. Let me have one.”

You release the drive, and he pockets it, pinching his brow at you suspiciously.

“Good day, Ms. Luthor.”

You look after them both as they leave before returning to your desk. The oscillator was functional. It was designed properly, tested thoroughly, and manufactured without defect. Everything on that drive will say exactly that, and it’s the truth. It means you’re innocent.

And it also means you’re in danger.

You leave the office not long after Kent and Danvers do, for a meeting across town. It’s a beautiful day, though, and you do let yourself enjoy the sun privately on the short walk from the roof exit to the helicopter waiting for you. Blue skies and sunshine.

You should have known everything would go to shit.

“Should be a smooth flight, Ms. Luthor,” your pilot says. You glance at his displays quickly, and he’s right. Everything’s ready, the engine beats the rotors at a blur’s pace above you.

“I hate flying,” you say instead. He smiles at that. “I know statistically it’s the safest way to travel, but still.”

Movement, then. That shouldn’t be there, out of the corner of your eye. A drone? You’re forty floors up and then some, way too high for a hobbyist craft.

“What the hell?” is what comes to you to say about the development, before the world rips apart.

That’s dramatic. What actually happens is a rocket hits the back rotor and the chopper starts to spin. Your pilot is knocked unconscious, of course, and you grab the stick in front of you. You know you’re too high in the air for a smooth landing, but if you can get the spin under any kind of control maybe you have a chance to survive it.

Superman and his cousin show up then, make some kind of undoubtedly witty banter with whoever’s controlling the drones currently trying to kill you. You feel the spin of the chopper slip beyond what you can control from the cockpit then, but it’s only for a few seconds before the whole thing jolts from below. Your shoulder slams into the door to the cockpit as the spin abruptly stops. That’s going to hurt tomorrow.

Before you know it you’re on the ground, and there’s Supergirl, looking heroic and concerned. Relief floods you, despite the flames and the smoke.

“You’re safe now,” she says. Blue eyes find yours, then flit away, squinting.

“What the hell was that?” you ask, forceful enough that it jerks Supergirl’s eyes back up to yours. Her jaw sets, looking at you.

“Someone’s trying to kill you.”

She pulls the co-pilot from the cockpit first, laying him on the concrete and coming back to the open door before you can blink. And then she’s ripping your seatbelt clear from the catches, easy as sliding a cell phone out of her pocket.

“The button was intact,” you laugh. You feel a little lightheaded. Probably from the smoke.

Supergirl looks up at you, has the decency to look sheepish, before she grabs your arm gently to pull you out of the aircraft, too.

“Chopper’s toast anyway, right?”

You shot a man today.

Well, maybe not a man. You’d call him a roach, but that would be cruel to roaches.

James Corben is maybe more of a Luthor than you are, you think. Still loyal, still ruthless, which is what Luthors are in spades. There are L.L. initials all over this, you can tell.

Over 3,000 miles between you and that damned red sun in Metropolis, and you’re not far enough away still.

You pour yourself a stiff glass of scotch, or three, and stay up until 3 AM going over the blueprints of those damn batteries in the basement of L-Corp tower.

Your assistant sends the article to your tablet four minutes after it hits _The Daily Planet_ ’s website, and you’re already at your desk, putting the final touches on the fix from yesterday’s problems. You finish them before opening the article, sending them to engineering and letting the little thrill of small accomplishment distract you from the article you need to read before it starts trending.

It’s not as inflammatory as you expect. In fact it’s downright flattering.

“Luthor’s quick action and Supergirl’s timely arrival ensured that the man responsible has been caught, and is currently in custody with NCPD,” you read.

Clark Kent giving credit to a Luthor where it’s due. Will wonders never cease?

You press the intercom on your desk phone.

“Alana, please extend an invitation to Clark Kent,” you pause, “and his associate Kara Danvers for later today. I’d like to speak with him about his article.”

“Right away, Ms. Luthor.”

Kent and Danvers arrive that afternoon, the latter with a physical copy of the paper containing Kent’s article. You take it from her with a smile, which earns you a smile in return, and it’s should probably concern you that you can feel the warmth of the sun there, for just a moment, before you turn away. Instead you lead them back to your desk and pretend to read the article for the first time, skimming everything before folding the paper and laughing your approval of its contents.

“Thank you, Mr. Kent. This is exactly the kind of press my company needs after yesterday’s attack.”

You leave your chair to stand equal with Kent, crossing your arms.

“And thank you for including the part about me shooting the guy. That’ll teach Lex to mess with me,” you chuckle, thinking of your brother in prison and how mad he used to get when you beat him at chess. “He’ll be the laughingstock of cell block X.”

“Well that’s not why I wrote it,” Kent says, smiling all the way to his eyes this time. “I did it because it’s the truth. I was wrong about you, Ms. Luthor. And I’m sorry.”

You let him have this, accept his apology because Clark Kent isn’t an enemy you care to make again.

“Well, if I can make a believer out of Clark Kent, there’s hope yet.”

But you have an ulterior motive, too.

“And what about you, Ms. Danvers? I didn’t see your name on the byline.”

You fix her with a stare, interested because you are. You didn’t come here to make friends, but associates in the press are always an asset. And if those assets are also blonde, and cute, and staring at you open-mouthed as though they’ve never seen a woman before, well.

So much the better.

“Uh-oh,” she says, clamps her mouth shut but doesn’t look away. “Well, like I said, I’m not a reporter, so.”

“Well you could have fooled me,” you smile and wave them off casually. “I hope this isn’t the last time we talk.”

“I hope not either,” she says. And when she smiles, her blue eyes light up with it. Like smiling at you, at a Luthor, is the most natural thing in the world.

Not that you’d set an alert for it to your personal email account, or anything. But her name does appear on the CatCo website two days later.


	2. Chapter 2

There’s a breach in your cloud server.

The notification comes from IT at an ungodly hour, when you’ve finally managed to fall asleep through a combination of late-night television and 30 year old scotch. The tell-tale double ping from your tablet on the coffee table rouses you from your uncomfortable position on the couch. You pull the collar of your nightshirt back up over your shoulder where it had slunk down in sleep, and pull your tablet onto your lap to see what the issue is.

There are four emails from IT. The first is a notification of the breach, promising that details will be forthcoming. The second and third are updates, four minutes apart, saying that they’ve located the breach and closed it, respectively. The last one seems at first glance to be a double-send of the close notification.

The size of it is too big, though. Almost double the size of the third email. An amateurish phish, but it concerns you. It was sent almost 15 minutes after the breach was closed.

You bite your lip, considering. It’s four o’clock in the morning, and you have an early meeting. Your television still drones in the background, your empty scotch glass sitting on the coffee table next to the half-empty bottle of Glenfiddich Private Reserve that’d helped you fall asleep. You run your fingers through your tangled black hair, sweeping it away from your face, and cross your legs beneath your tablet.

“Shit,” you curse, and click into the email.

The attachment you find is a stupidly easy cipher, because it isn’t really a cipher at all. You click into the header of the email to convert the attachment into harmless MIME encoded text, and what’s spelled out is a message meant only for you in a mass of simple base-64 encoding:

_The aboriginal sons of the dragon's teeth among them . . . would maintain that nothing which they cannot squeeze with their hands has any existence at all._

You want to laugh, but the bubble of sound that escapes you is more like a scoff than a snicker. People always said that your brother had a flair for the dramatic, but that wasn’t his fault. It runs in the family.

The story from Plato goes like this: Athena came to the King of Thebes and gave him a handful of dragon’s teeth, from which he grew and army of mythical men. It’s a fitting metaphor for the Supers, if you believed them mindless warriors like your brother and mother do.

You’re not sure you agree with them. But it’s the meaning hidden in the reference that has you rolling your eyes and starting to plan: Athena instructed a specific king to sow the dragon’s teeth in the earth: the first one.

Cadmus.

You delete the email.

And pour yourself another scotch.

The Alien Amnesty Act becomes a near certainty within the next week, and you have to disregard whatever your mother was doing in your company cloud late at night in favor of working with your PR department on a press release about the bill’s impending passage. They want to go aggressively positive on the Act, lauding the president’s action on the whole alien rights topic and declaring L-Corp a staunch supporter of the march of progress.

The conference room PR had booked is full: reps from legal, marketing, and public relations are all present. Marketing is presenting their integrated plan for the release, including shorter statements meant for Twitter and pictures for Facebook and Instagram. Their representative is an animated speaker, jumping in front and away from his powerpoint when the need strikes him.

It all sounds a bit too wrapped up with a bow to you. Maybe in a world where people couldn’t remember that the company had been named Luthor Corp just a few weeks prior, coming out with a cheap corporate rah-rah statement would be a good thing. Just paint the Twitter icon whatever the alien equivalent of the Pride flag is and leave it at that.

But L-Corp _had_ been Luthor Corp, and you are still a Luthor. And your mother’s message needles in the back of your mind like a blinking warning light. A defter touch is going to be needed here if the statement is going to be believed.

“Walk down the middle,” you tell them. “The Act can be a good thing for L-Corp, but we have human customers as well. Overt bias will only shrink our customer base.”

The marketing rep in front of the screen at the head of the conference room visibly deflates. His powerpoint probably has five or so more slides meant to convince you that his sunshine and rainbows approach is the way to go, but you’ve already made up your mind.

“Have new copy on my desk by end of day, please,” you say. Alana gathers her things behind you while you click your pen back into its place in your notebook, already having guessed that this meeting is over. You sweep out of the room before he can respond, Alana following quick-footed behind you.

“We have an extra fifteen minutes until your next meeting, Ms. Luthor,” she says, coming alongside you in the hallway. “So a half hour, total.”

You like Alana. Her mother had hired her before she left to work for the government, but she turned out to be an asset to you: quick-thinking and organized. She always had the information you needed on-hand, anticipating what came next rather than waiting to react to a request. It’s a good quality in an executive assistant.

“I’m going to catch up on some items until I have to meet with R&D,” you tell her. “I’ll be in my office, but please, take some time to stretch your legs. Find a coffee shop worth going to around here.”

“Oh,” she stumbles a bit over your suggestion. A small smile spreads across her face as she assents. “Of course, Ms. Luthor. But if you want coffee around here, you go to Noonan’s. Shall I bring you back anything?”

“I wouldn’t say no to a cappuccino,” you tell her, already thinking of the bitter tang of espresso and the soft curl of milk foam.

Alana leaves you at the elevator to take another car down to the lobby, and you head back to your office alone. It’s less personal than your office in Metropolis had been. There, you’d made it a home, happy to be working with Lex on what you thought was world-changing tech that _didn’t_ involve turning the sun red and killing all sentient life. You haven’t made that same mistake here, opting for sleek, modern furnishings and as few personal knickknacks and touches as possible.

This isn’t your home, and you don’t intend to get comfortable here so long as you can help it.

You ping messages back and forth with your head engineer on your pet project while Alana is gone. It’s an alien detection device, a simple thumb scanner that indicates whether the user is human or not. You want it sleek, non-invasive, and safe. The next frontier after the Alien Amnesty Act will be trying to integrate a newly-out alien population with the existing human one, and knowledge of status will help bridge that gap.

You smile, that little thrill of accomplishment ghosting around your heart when the engineer pings back that they’ll have a prototype ready for you to look at in a few days.

“Ms. Luthor,” Alana gasps, running into your office. She’s upset, clutching a coffee cup in each hand, her purse slung low in the crook of her arm. “Ms. Luthor have you seen the news?”

You knit your brow concerned as she springs to your desk and grabs your television remote, clicking the TV in the corner onto a news station. A slightly frantic on-site reporter is speaking above a chyron that makes something clench in your middle and then go cold.

PRESIDENT ATTACKED BY UNKNOWN ALIEN

You’re on the phone to R&D before Alana can say anything else, still glued to the television.

“Ms. Luthor?” comes the voice at the other end of the line, confused.

“Have that prototype ready for me tomorrow.”

R&D delivers the prototype as you’d asked the next morning, in a lead-lined box with a biometric lock. You look quizzically at the engineer who’d delivered it, wondering at the over-the-top security theater of it all.

He just shrugs, “Standard practice for alien-related projects, at least as long as I’ve been here.”

You place your thumb on the glass oval on the box’s surface. It’s a DNA scanner, you realize, the hum and heat of it passing over the pad of your thumb before the device beeps and the mechanism unlocks itself.

“Where’d you get my DNA?” you ask, eyeing the engineer slyly. He shrugs.

“All of these boxes were made before my time here, Ms. Luthor,” he says.

You make a mental note to go over the locking mechanism in more detail later for answers, and settle for unlatching the now unlocked box and taking a look at what’s inside.

The scanner is small, fitting in the palm of your hand with room to spare, and teardrop shaped. Its surface is silvery and sleek.

“Only two elements, for ease of manufacture and maintenance,” the engineer narrates as you examine the outer shell of the device. “A simple scan, with the indicator lighting green for human and red for non-human.”

You press your thumb into the scanning surface. It takes three seconds for the indicator to flash green.

“This is a very good start,” you say. The engineer flashes a smile at your rare praise. And normally you wouldn’t be so effusive as even this simple sentence with it, but accomplishment is at hand and you can’t help yourself. Executive leadership came to you later in life. You’ve always been a scientist.

“I’d like to see the response time brought down, though. If we’re to have this in every store and town in the country, three seconds is far too long to wait for a response.”

“We’ll get right on it,” he says, still with the last vestiges of that smile on his face but taking your words for the dismissal they are.

You put the device back in its box, opting to pull up the schematics that R&D had sent you to accompany the demonstration. You’ve always found solace here, in the math. Physics and chemistry are constants, reliable. Predictable. Even new discoveries fit with the old like puzzle pieces, everything in its place, working in concert.

Getting elbow deep in the science relaxes you physically. Shoulders slouching, heels kicked off under your desk, the end of your stylus pen between your teeth. There’s a small bit of annoyance when you go to run your hand through your hair and remember that you’d put it up into a severe high ponytail that morning, but other than that, you get a good fifteen minutes of nerdy alone time before you’re drawn back to reality.

Alana pokes her head in, knocking softly on the wall to get your attention. You straighten your back and smile thinly at her.

“Kara Danvers from CatCo Magazine is here,” she says. “She’s wondering if you have a moment.”

And maybe it’s the leftover good will from getting some playtime in your preferred sandbox, but you toe your feet back into your heels, smile a bit wider at Alana, and say, “Please show her in.”

Meeting Kara Danvers without Clark Kent turns out to be a very different matter.

She breezes into your office like you’re old friends, moving with more confidence than you’d seen before, when she was all but cowering behind the other reporter. She’s dressed differently too: a warm-looking gray sweater and fitted dark green chinos. You’ve never seen business casual look so soft.

Her cheeks are a little pink when she extends a hand to you across your desk, calling you “Miss Luthor” and meeting your eyes. And something pulls you to put her at ease.

“Lena, please,” you say through a smile. “It’s good to see you again, Ms. Danvers.”

She dips her head in a nod, her mouth pulling up to one side in a little grin.

“Well, if I’m calling you Lena –”

“Kara it is,” you assent, sitting and motioning for her to do the same. “Oh, and if you have a parking ticket, I can have it validated.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” she handwaves your offer as though she can’t think of you going through the trouble of having Alana stamp her ticket for her. “I flew here, uh. On a bus.”

She cringes bodily at her own sentence, and her embarrassment twists something in your gut. So you change the subject.

“Well, I’m glad to see you gave reporting a shot. Though, if you’re here on the same day the President is here to sign her Alien Amnesty Act –”

“I must be here to ask the sister of Earth's most notorious alien-hater her take on the President's executive order,” Kara finishes for you. She’s pulled a notebook and a tape recorder from her bag and now holds them up to show you.

You make a stupid decision, then.

“I want to show you something,” you tell her, getting up from your desk and going over to the little lock box again. You take the device from it and hold it out for her. Kara rises to her feet to look at it.

You get a closer view of her then, for a moment, while her eyes are occupied with the silver device in your palm. She smells like summer wind and sunshine. Before you can do anything embarrassing like sigh about that, though, she speaks.

“What is it?”

“It's an alien detection device that allows humans to find out who among them is not truly one of them. It's not market-ready yet. I mean, we're still developing the prototype. But we aim to have this device in every store, in every town all across America.”

You say all of this in a bit of a rush, with a little more pride than you ought to for a casual interview. But you can’t help it. The science, the potential, hell, the money this device represents to you is thrilling.

Kara looks less than thrilled.

“How does it work?” she asks, dubious. You shake your head, thinking she’s worried about it being invasive. As if you’d ever put people at risk.

“It’s just a simple skin test,” you tell her. “Okay, let me show you what a negative response looks like.”

You flip the thing around in your hand and press your thumb to the scanner, waiting for it to light up green. When it does you smile again. Reconfirmation is exciting, after all. Then you hold the scanner out towards Kara.

“Now you try.”

You wait, expectant, sure you’re about to wow her. This device will be the biggest leap in instant-read tech since the fingerprint scanner came to the smartphone.

Instead, Kara hides her hands around her notebook as though touching the scanner will burn her.

“But won’t this device,” she begins, stops to tilt her head in thought. “Doesn’t it go against everything America is supposed to stand for?”

A chill runs through you. You straighten your spine out of habit, suddenly defensive, and cross your arms over your chest.

“Such as?” you say. You manage not to scoff, thankfully. It’s a near thing.

When Kara answers you there’s a chuckle at the edge of her words that you think is discomfort. A sly voice in your head wants to name it condescension.

“Well, freedom?” she says. “Against persecution, oppression. I mean, America has always been a country full of immigrants.”

“It’s also always been a country of humans,” you say, and this time you do scoff, just a little. You’re here creating technology that will revolutionize the world, and you’re being judged by a cub reporter from a gossip rag.

Kara laughs nervously, and her discomfort again tempers your ire.

“Just. Don’t you think this device will force aliens back into the very shadows the president is trying to shine a light on?”

“If aliens want to be citizens, that's now their right. But if humans want to know which of their fellow citizens aren't actually one of them, then that's their right too.”

You speak in a rush again. Something about arguing with Kara puts you off your usual cadence. Which is ridiculous: disagreement is easily sixty percent of your job.

“I’m a business woman,” you say, unsure if you’re reminding Kara or yourself of that fact. “L-Corp is in the business of making money, and this device is going to make us a fortune.”

You turn back to sit at your desk, and can’t resist adding: “And unlike my brother, I’m going to do it for the good of the world.”

You take a breath before you proposition her again with the device. You do want Kara Danvers to see through whatever preconceived notions she clearly has about your intentions with the thing. And more than that, you want to share that little thrill of pride you have in it.

So you pick it up and offer it to her in one hand, both of your elbows on your desk. And you smile up at her with your eyebrows raised and your teeth sunk into your bottom lip. You know you’ve worn her down when her slack-jawed gaze lingers on your mouth.

“So?” you ask.

“Right,” she remembers herself, smiles a bit nervously.

She places her finger on the scanner in your hand, and waits the requisite three seconds.

It blinks red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OHOHOHOHO
> 
> This is where we diverge a bit from canon. You'll recognize the arcs going forward, but they're in a different (I think better) order and pace.
> 
> As always, yell at me in the comments, or on Tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease!


	3. Chapter 3

The room is silent for a moment after the test. Kara Danvers looks at the blinking red light on your alien detection device, and then up at you. Your eyes widen of their own accord in shock, before you can school them back into neutral compliance.

“I see,” you say. You swear it’s so quiet you can hear Alana shuffling papers around her desk just outside your office.

You don’t pull your hands away from Kara’s. The moment feels fragile, like spun sugar. You watch Kara’s throat bob with a swallow. Her blue eyes are wide but very far from afraid. You’d called Clark Kent steely on your last meeting, but this is different. He was a sword, accusatory and aggressive.

Kara Danvers’ hard gaze is a shield, and a question for you.

Will you make her raise it?

“Do you see what I mean?” Kara says, finally dropping her thumb from the device. “Just the knowledge can change things.”

You sit back a bit, putting some space between the two of you. Kara shifts her weight, clutches her notebook to her chest as she waits on your answer.

“What do you think has changed here?” you ask. You try to keep the accusation out of your voice, and know you aren’t successful when Kara drops her notebook to hang in her hand at her side and takes a step towards you. Your desk stops her, her thighs pressed against the edge of it.

“Not like that,” she says. She shakes her head as thought he words she needs have to be stirred like a cocktail before they’ll come together in the right order. “I don’t mean for you, specifically. Just. You know this, Lena. You know that not everyone takes kindly to aliens living among humans, especially secretly.”

And if _that’s_ not laced with innuendo about your brother, nothing has been.

There are things you should do now: allow Kara to explain what she means, agree with her that privacy concerns are valid and will be taken into consideration, explain your point of view in more detail to put her at ease. Make her understand that this is for the good of humanity, so people will know their neighbors and be able to protect themselves as needed. Hell, maybe even yell at her for the presumption that none of these concerns had gone unattended during R&D on the device.

Just: _something_.

But you don’t, or rather you don’t get the chance to. Because Alana pokes her head in then, notifying you that your next meeting begins in five minutes and is scheduled for a conference room at the other end of the building.

You want to tell her to cancel it, to order some more time with Kara to hash this out. But Kara uses the interruption to look at her watch, hastily making an excuse and then her exit. And you’re left behind your desk with the unpleasant feeling that you’re about to be fed to the wolves in the press.

When they’re both gone from the room, you throw the alien detection device into its box so hard it bounces back out and scuffles uselessly on your polished floors.

It’s childish, but it makes you feel better.

“Why even have her try it at all?” is what Sam says when you call her that afternoon at the peak of your anxiety about the whole thing.

The sun is setting behind you, throwing your starkly white office into bloody orange relief. The floors are even warm – you’d kicked off your heels half an hour ago to run your stockinged toes across the tile. When you throw splashes of color into your wardrobe – a slide of yellow across the shoulder of a dress, or a saturated red silk blouse – this golden hour is what you’re chasing.

“I don’t _know_ ,” you say to Sam, cinching your phone between your ear and your shoulder so you can continue working while your conversation continues. You can hear Sam clicking away in the background of the call, undoubtedly doing the same thing.

It’s the way your relationship has been since you first met: earnest conversation between and sometimes concurrent with the staggering amount of work you both do every day.

“She was so put out just by the idea of the whole thing. And you know how I’ve been working on this. I got carried away, and I shouldn’t have. Not with a reporter.”

“Is she hot?” is Sam’s next question, and you can practically see her smile on the other end of the line, teasing you.

“Why, are you dating again?” you ask. She scoffs in your ear and you can’t help the laughter that bubbles up your throat at the sound.

“As though I’ve got time to date cute reporters with all the work you left me out here.”

“I’ll remind you that you _volunteered_ for the job, Miss Arias,” you laugh again. Sam has a way of uncurling the tension from your body like this. Speaking with her is easy in a way that interacting with almost anyone else very much isn’t. She’s your employee, technically, but that’s never been a distinction either of you have felt much need to insist on throughout the years.

You wish she was here.

“Anyway, it’s not like this will be the first time a reporter will try to drag your name through the mud,” Sam says. “My advice is not to react too harshly to it. Let her say her piece and it’ll blow over in a few weeks.”

You hum assent at that, but it doesn’t sit right with you. Sam must sense that, because she continues to talk.

“Or, you could call her back to your office and use your feminine wiles to secure a rosier article,” she says. Her voice is low and sultry, sharpened just so with the bite of sarcasm. And you can’t help it again, laughing earnest and loud, eyes pulled closed with it and away from your work.

You can’t help but imagine how that’d go, after the awkwardness of your last meeting. Calling Kara Danvers back to your office in the twilight of a long day. You can imagine her on your couch, setting sun glinting off her golden hair. Would she shoot that blue-eyed question at you again, raise her shield in pre-emptive defense? Or would she disarm with a smile and lean back into the cushion there?

That’s probably not a good question to answer even in your own head, if the helium-light expansion inside your ribs at the thought is any indication.

“You know me,” you say to Sam instead, eyes still on your empty couch across the room as though if you look hard enough, Kara might actually appear. “I’m all about throwing my feminine wiles around.”

“We can only use what we have,” Sam says, laughing with you. “Listen, I’ve gotta run – Ruby gets out of soccer in fifteen minutes and I agreed to bring snacks today. Let me know how everything shakes out okay?”

“Tell Ruby I said hello,” you bid her by way of a goodbye.

And you let yourself bask in the homey feeling the conversation has left you with, just for a few minutes, before resuming your own work.

The alien who attacked the president is captured a day later, the local news stations applauding Supergirl for her hand in the arrest along with NCPD’s Science division. The president signs her Alien Amnesty Act, and you begin pouring over contracts for new supply chain partners for your detection device.

All new partnership-level contracts have to be approved by the board anyway, of course. But you’re still rooting out the last vestiges of your mother’s influence there, and so you’re taking a more hands-on approach to each new company than you otherwise would. Really all it means is that you don’t go back to your hotel room until the wee hours, if at all.

So nothing much changes.

Still, you find yourself dreading the end of the week, when the new edition of CatCo magazine will be coming out. You have a dozen contracts still in revision, you haven’t had more than two hours of sleep at a time in almost a week, and now you need to gild yourself for the drubbing you’re no doubt in for. Alana drops the print version of the magazine on your desk early Friday morning, along with a few others you have standing subscriptions to.

CatCo’s bright pink and yellow cover stands out among the dull grays and muted blacks of your tech and business periodicals like a poison frog. You make the point of getting to the end of the hundred-page contract you’re slogging through before picking it up.

The article you’re dreading is teased on the cover but it’s not the cover story. That particular honor goes to the president’s recent peril, for which you’re a little bit grateful. The teaser to Kara’s article is simple, slid into the bottom corner in black lettering that’s almost somber compared to the riot of color elsewhere on the page.

_Final Frontier: L-Corp Debuts Alien Scanner_

And that’s, well. Neutral.

You flip to the right page within the magazine, where Kara has apparently been given an entire page to wax philosophic about your meeting. The headline is in big, bolded black letters, her byline and headshot just below. You can just make out the crinkles at the edges of her eyes as she smiles in it, even in the low resolution of the small photo.

The article itself is like its teaser: neutral. Kara’s prose is a bit halting – she’s new, after all – but clear and mostly concise. She even explains a bit of the tech, which is impressive, given how little you’d given her beyond getting to touch the little machine. The latter half of the page is spent on the implications of mass adoption of your system, and you breathe a little quicker as you read it, ready for each sentence in succession to be the guillotine you expect is buried in the prose.

But it never comes. Sure, Kara goes over the concerns she can see in some detail. But there’s no admonishment, no scolding. No heavy-handed tilting at windmills about the device being the end of the American experiment. And she even has copy dedicated to your own arguments, or at least what she seems to understand of them.

The whole thing leaves you with the last feeling you’d expected: guilt.

“Alana,” you say into your intercom. “Can you please extend an invitation to Kara Danvers, at her earliest convenience?”

“Right away, Ms. Luthor,” comes Alana’s response.

Kara, it turns out, has time for you that very afternoon. She sweeps into your office just past seven in the evening, with the setting California sun once again painting your office in pretty oranges and reds.

She’s come from work, you can tell. Her pink lipstick looks faded with speaking and her hair is just a little bit flat where she’s drawn it back halfway to keep it out of her face. It must be cool for summer, outside, because she’s wearing a very soft looking gray cardigan over her maroon dress.

And look, you’re not stupid. You know the deep breath building in your lungs at the sight of her is attraction. Kara is pretty, _lovely,_ even, to look at. And she has a smile for you, today, despite the awkwardness of your last encounter.

“Hi,” she says as Alana closes the door behind her. The sun glints off the buckle of the thin belt she has cinched around her waist. You try not to let your gaze linger in that area.

“Sorry to drop by unannounced,” she continues. “I just got the message that you wanted to see me?”

Before you can open your mouth to respond, though, she’s stopped in her tracks. Tilts her head at the flowers on your coffee table and speaks again.

“Those flowers are beautiful.”

“They’re called plumerias,” you tell her. New beginnings, is what they are. “They’re pretty rare.”

“They remind me of my mother,” she says, almost under her breath. She flushes prettily when she realizes she’s rambled something personal to you, but you wave her off.

“Was she a journalist too?”

“Um, no,” Kara says. She takes a seat at the other end of the couch from you. “She was, I guess sort of a lawyer?”

It sounds like a question when she says it, as though she’s searching for the right word. It reminds you of learning Latin, that scraping for a word that means what you want it to but not finding the right one. You wonder if there’s a better cognate for what she means, perhaps in a mother tongue that would be entirely foreign to you.

“Well, you,” you say, drawing her out of her head again. She adjusts her glasses as her eyes meet yours. “You have a natural gift with words. The article’s amazing.”

She laughs, the sound like bells, stronger than you’d expected. As though the easy praise really affects her.

“I knew you’d make a great reporter,” you tell her. “Though I have to say, after our. Mm. After our last meeting I was afraid you’d do a hatchet job on me.”

You chuckle as you accuse, playing with your fingers in your lap, but Kara dips her head in understanding. In acquiescence.

“I tried,” she admits. “Oh I tried. I wrote a _scathing_ article about your device.”

“And?” you prod when she doesn’t continue right away.

“And,” she picks up, laughing again sheepishly. You let you lips thin into a smile at her. “And my boss tossed it. He made me re-do it.”

“Well, that explains it,” you say. You’re disappointed, and hide it behind a laugh and a quick frown directed squarely at your palms in your lap.

“The funny thing is, I’m glad he did,” she says next, though. She nods her head as she speaks, and you get a little thrill out of finding that Kara Danvers talks a lot more with her body than she does with her mouth. She’s opened up to you physically now, turned to face you squarely across the sofa. You bring the knee closest to her up onto the couch so you can do the same, mirroring her posture. It eggs her on.

“I mean, not at first,” she says. You laugh because you both know it’s true, what she says, the tip of her head and the hand she holds out to you saying that plain as day. “But some things have happened that made me re-think my position.”

And now it’s your turn to open up, slinging an elbow across the back of the couch and smoothing your hand through your hair to prop up your head.

“Do tell,” you say, and you don’t mean it to come out a coquettishly as it does, but there you have it. Kara rises to it, though, responding to the bite you sink into your bottom lip with a somewhat breathy laugh and a pointed look away from your neckline, where her gaze had dropped when you’d moved. You smile at her while she can’t see you, at the recognition of something you know well enough.

You’re affecting her, too.

Another little zip of happy discovery dashes up your spine, and you shift in your seat to diffuse it.

“I still think alien amnesty is a good thing,” she says. She adjusts her glasses again. A nervous tic, then. “But there are bad aliens out there.”

You breathe out _something_ then, as you tell her you’re glad she can see it from your point of view. Nerves, you think. Or the urge to get closer to her. You stay put, at least.

Kara looks at you like you understand perfectly what she’s trying to say, and before you can stop yourself, you’re speaking to confirm it.

“You know, when I was first adopted by the Luthors, I adored Lex,” you tell her, smiling fondly at the memory. “When he showed his true colors, I was crushed.”

And this is more serious now. Kara seems to know that, eyes squinted as though it’ll make her hear better.

“I tried _everything_ ,” you entreat her. “Everything, to reach him. To bring him back to the side of good.”

You shake your head, the red glow of your office now only an oppressive reminder of just how wrong that had gone.

“It wasn’t any use,” you say. “I’d lost him well before I’d even thought to try saving him. And finally I realized: some people are just bad. And maybe there’s nothing you can do to change that. But you can learn to protect yourself.”

When you look at Kara again, her brow is knit in something like concern. It draws you out of your reverie, puts the room back into sharp focus. You’re not in Metropolis, the sun is only red because it’s setting and glinting off the buildings surrounding yours. And your brother is in prison.

He’s in prison because you put him there.

Kara takes what you’ve said in stride, smiling and assenting, “yeah” when you look at her again. You hope she’ll leave it at that, because you’ve said too much already, and you need to steer this conversation back into more professional spaces before the anxiety rising like bile in your throat makes you say something else you’ll regret.

“You know it wasn’t your fault,” she says instead. It’s too familiar. Your walls are built up too high again, and you bristle.

“I’m well aware that my brother’s sins are his own,” you say, sharp enough that Kara closes her mouth and holds out a palm in supplication to you.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and actually sounds contrite. “I shouldn’t have pried.”

The honesty disarms you, and the additional rebuke you’d loaded in your throat dies there. You swallow it down.

“It’s fine, Kara.”

“There a things we all want to keep to ourselves,” she says, speaking with the weight and cadence of someone who knows how secrets and histories can burden. “I can respect that.”

“Well, it’s nice that someone does,” you say. And Kara smiles at you for taking her olive branch.

You ignore how it lifts your mood almost instantly to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yell at me in the comments, or on Tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time you see Kara, it’s in the bright morning of a Thursday, halfway into your second cup of coffee and elbow-deep in a very boring contract. It’s 10 AM, and your weeks of sleeplessness are starting to catch up to you. The caffeine hasn’t even hit yet, and you’re hoping it does at some point before your afternoon rolls around and you’ll need to stay awake in drab conference rooms until the sun sets and you can start drinking again.

Luckily, half your brain function is more than enough for contract review.

You do hate this part of new project launch, though. Before the device can be marketed in earnest, you have to secure new supply chain partners and manufacturing. Pieces of the device contain new technology that none of your current partners, nor your actual subsidiaries, can produce at scale. So: contract hell is going to be most of your life for the next few weeks.

You hear her first, outside your office, which is strange, because the hallway is build to dampen sound. But her voice worms its way into your head, asking Alana if she can go back, and you’re already staring at your office doorway before she rounds the corner there.

She’s wearing blue today, a soft Henley in robin’s egg that make her eyes shine behind her glasses. And another pair of chinos, in black this time, fitted to her narrow hips by a belt with a silver buckle.

You like her in blue.

Something clicks into place in your brain then, and you temper the eager greeting you’d loaded onto your tongue.

“Hey, Lena,” she greets you instead. “Sorry to drop by unannounced again.”

“It’s fine, Kara,” you say. “What did you need?”

She digs in her bag for something, coming back up with a little black flash drive in her hand. She leans over your crowded desk and hands it to you.

“Someone dropped this to me at CatCo,” she says. You look at the little device in your hands like it’s an explosive. In your world, flash drives can be more dangerous than bullets. “It’s full of internal L-Corp emails.”

“I knew there was a breach, but I thought it’d been closed in time,” you say. You look up at her, scrutinizing. Kara Danvers does not shrink from you, though.

“Well,” she says. “There isn’t a bunch on there that’s embarrassing from what I saw, but I didn’t go through things with a fine-toothed comb, either.”

You let your tongue run over your teeth for a beat before you speak again. You seem to have a habit of shoving your foot directly down your throat in front of Kara, and you’d rather not do that today.

“Why,” is what you settle on. “A cache like this probably has plenty in it to make your name on.”

This seems to confuse her. She cocks her head to the side, blonde ponytail folding itself over the back of her neck and over her collarbone.

“I don’t want a name,” she says. “Not like that.”

This surprises you, makes you flit your eyes around her face to catch the dishonesty you know has to be there, somewhere. But there’s nothing. Just Kara’s small, open smile and clear blue eyes.

“Oh,” you say, very intelligently. “In that case, thank you.”

Kara smiles wider at that. Something in your chest flutters embarrassingly when the brilliant white of her teeth is revealed in gratitude. She’s _happy_ that you’re _thanking_ her. You run your thumb over the surface of the flash drive in an unconscious caress.

“Of course!” she says. Her fingers go to her glasses, and you know she’s not done.

“Was there something else?” you ask.

“Oh, well,” she hedges. Takes a breath to steady herself before the words start pouring out of her at a clip you’re almost not able to comprehend. “Look, maybe this is way out of left field, but I’m going to this game night tonight that my sister puts on. And I know you’re busy here, and all, but would you like to swing by, maybe? It’s just good friends and too much booze and a lot of board games.”

You thrill to it. Genuine, spine-tingling, smile-inducing thrill at the thought of spending an evening with Kara Danvers. You get a _very_ pleasant mental image, then, of Kara in a sweater and a soft pair of blue jeans, laughing with a glass of wine in hand at something you’ve said.

As if that’s not fucking terrifying.

You put the flash drive back down on your desk, on the half closest to where her thighs still touch the edge. And you rip up the picture in your head into so many pieces that you hope your subconscious won’t be able to glue it back together when you’re drunk and alone tonight.

“Listen,” you say, trying to put your hard edge back into your voice. You hate how she softens you this way. “When I said I hoped we’d be able to work together more often, I meant as colleagues.”

Her face falls, and maybe you hate yourself a little bit, too.

“I’d hate for you to give this to me out of some misguided sense of friendly obligation,” you say, looking at the drive so you don’t have to see the way her brow knits together in hurt and confusion. But you have to look up at her to convey the most important part.

“I didn’t come here to make friends.”

She lets the words settle in the space between you, eyes a bit glossy. God, you hope she doesn’t cry. Your resolve won’t survive that, you don’t think.

“I didn’t,” she says. And it’s not sadness but indignance in her voice. “I brought you the drive because it’s the right thing to do. You’re not obligated to me, and I’m. I’m sorry, if I misread things.”

She didn’t, and that’s the worst part. The part you clutch so tightly to the inside of your ribs now to keep it slipping through them.

“I hope this doesn’t affect our working relationship,” she says. And you give her, and yourself, this one little morsel.

“It doesn’t need to.”

Kara gives you a small, sad smile and a quick goodbye, then. And you grip the edge of your desk until you leave a visible fingerprint on the polished surface to keep from stalking after her.

It’s now 10:15. Far too early to start commiserating with a bottle of scotch.

You keep getting emails at four in the morning.

At least you’re in bed this time – you’d gone back to your hotel room around midnight and only drank a third of a bottle of high-end scotch to fall asleep. You want to consider that progress, but even you’re not that bad at recognizing self-destruction.

It’s a better email than the one you’d received a week prior in the wee hours, too, which _is_ progress. This one is from a friend, obviously at the very start of her workday, three thousand miles away and three hours ahead of you.

**From: j.hoang@lcorp.com**

**To: lena.luthor@lcorp.com**

**Subj: RE: RE: RE: Transfer Request**

You’d thought to ask Jess to follow you to National City when you first moved. She would have said yes – Jess had been your assistant for a year before Lex’s schemes came to a head, ever since you’d plucked her from languishment on a small team in cybersecurity. You had abstained from asking her to follow you for that very reason. Jess was Metropolis through and through: born and raised there, college at Metro State, loving parents still within city limits. It wasn’t fair of you to ask her to leave that all behind just because you were running away.

But there have been two more attempts to infiltrate your systems in the last week.

Really, it’s more than that. L-Corp is a Fortune 30 company and is the target of not-infrequent cyber attacks generally. But these latest ones have been aimed at things no regular hacker would think to seek: Lex’s vaults secret vaults.

You know it’s your mother, no doubt searching for something alien to use against you, or against the Supers. Or hell, maybe both at the same time, knowing her. And though you’ve taken precautions – including a deployable Faraday cage for your whole building, should the need arise for one – you need someone who can keep an eye on the situation without arousing suspicion from the few of your mother’s cronies who now linger at your company.

And you’d trust Jess with your life.

I’ll be on the first flight tomorrow morning, Ms. Luthor.

J

You settle back into the smooth hotel sheets and smile. You’ve spent the first several months here in National City feeling something like a lone sniper in a tower, picking off enemies where you could and biding your time. Emailing Jess had felt like calling for reinforcements.

**From: lena.luthor@lcorp.com**

**To: j.hoang@lcorp.com**

**Subj: RE: RE: RE: RE: Transfer Request**

Nonsense. I’ll send the jet for you.

LL

Jess takes a day to cross the country and another to set up the shipment of her things from the east coast. And on the third day, she’s in the office before you are, waiting for you when you step off the elevator with an extra coffee and your morning schedule ready at hand.

“How’d I ever get on without you?” you ask her, taking the coffee with a smile. Jess smiles back, the gesture small but warm. Ever the professional.

Jess is short – shorter than you are, and you’re a mere five-five when you’re not in heels. And she’s always impeccably composed, glossy black hair pulled back conservatively and not a wrinkle to be found on her smart blue blazer and skirt combo. The two of you have the composure in common – women who navigate mostly male spaces know the value of immaculate dress and comportment – but where you fashion your appearance into a weapon to take power and respect where it won’t be given, Jess has to walk that delicate balance between effective and demure.

You don’t know anyone who does it better.

“Just fine, I’m sure, Ms. Luthor,” she says. “You have a meeting at nine, and the report you asked for is on your desk.”

“Thank you Jess. Any messages for me?”

“No, but,” she pauses, waits until you look her in the eye before continuing. “There’s a message from Ms. Sinclair in your inbox. Do you want me to handle it?”

Your good mood sours a bit. Veronica Sinclair is a very old acquaintance of yours – a boarding school friend you fell out with years ago. She’s the sort of person quick with a biting remark but slow to forget a slight against her. You’ve always run in the same circles, seeing each other each year at various galas and other events.

One of the nice things about being in Metropolis had been being three thousand miles away from her in between those events. But no more.

“No, I’ll deal with it,” you say. “Thank you, Jess.”

She nods and goes to sit at her desk as you turn towards your office. You look back over your shoulder before you disappear down the short corner.

“Oh and Jess?”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor?” she says, smiling up at you again quickly.

“Thank you for coming.”

“Of course, Ms. Luthor.”

It’s sunny in your office, but cool. You sip the coffee Jess brought while your laptop boots up, savoring the little hints of chicory in it. You glance at the cup – Noonan’s again. Looks like Jess already rifled through all the key elements of the job here.

There are a slew of emails in your inbox when it pulls up, even though you’ve only been offline for a few hours. You decide to get Veronica’s out of the way now. If you don’t, it’ll nag at you all day.

**From: roulette@sinevents.com**

**To: lena.luthor@lcorp.com**

**Subj: Exclusive Invite**

You roll your eyes. The thing looks like an early 2000s spam email – _Click here for the secret to massive growth!_ and all that. The body is brief though: a password, a location, and a price. You think the address is somewhere in the docks, or close to it. Your grasp of National City streets isn’t as good yet as it will be.

You click reply.

**From: lena.luthor@lcorp.com**

**To: roulette@sinevents.com**

**Subj: RE: Exclusive Offer**

Not even if you paid _me_ that much.

Lena

You know you shouldn’t snark, shouldn’t create conflict just to do it. But the reply is already sent and the window to recall it has passed before that thought comes back to you.

If Veronica is in the mood to fight, you’re sure you’ll be the first to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on Tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease


	5. Chapter 5

The room is warm. You’re warm too, your lower half wrapped in a blanket that’s tucked into the edges of the cushion of the old armchair you’re sitting in. The sweater you’re wearing is just slightly too big for you, the sleeves coming to the middle of your palms.

There are a few people there in front of you, gathered around the coffee table, but you only have eyes for one: Kara Danvers sits on the couch across from you. Her blonde hair is down, slung over one shoulder in a glossy cascade. You don’t know how long you spend looking at her there in the soft light of a table lamp next to the couch. Only that when you come back to yourself, you’re alone with her, and she’s looking back at you with a soft little smile that makes you twist your hands together in your lap.

She rises, pads to where you’re curled up in the armchair. Palms the armrests to lean into your space. And you’re smiling now too, looking up into her big blue eyes.

“Did you have fun?” she asks. And you know her voice well enough to read the small bit of insecurity there.

“I did,” you assuage her.

She smells like summer, like fresh peaches in the heat. And you want her closer. You pinch a bit of her shirt between your fingers, tugging lightly. She goes willingly, eyes dark and smile turning lascivious now that it’s just for you. You retreat, until your head hits the pillowy back of the chair. You’re smiling so wide you can feel it stretching into your cheeks, and Kara follows you and follows you, until she’s close enough that you can tip your chin up and –

You jerk up sideways in bed, yanking something out of place in your side painfully. The sheets and comforter are in a tight spiral around your hips. Your tangled hair falls into your face and you slump back to the pillows. You press your hands to your face. The last image in your dream feels burned into the backs of your eyes. You rub at them, like the picture is a dry erase board you can clear with a swipe.

It doesn’t work. You can see Kara’s eyes darken behind your lids and you all but growl at yourself, snapping your eyes open and wrenching your body from the covers.

When you had said you weren’t interested in being friends, you had apparently missed the monkey’s paw curling for you.

Another email from Veronica is waiting for you when you get into the office later that morning. You delete this one without opening it, going so far as to wipe it from your deleted folder to remove it from your account entirely.

You clench your jaw and flex your fingers angrily through three morning meetings and an overseas conference call before giving up and telling Jess to clear the rest of your day. You spend the afternoon and evening pouring over new project blueprints and trying to keep your dream from floating to the forefront of your mind.

And you’re mostly successful, especially when you scroll back farther than you have before in the virtual rolodex of abandoned projects in the L-Corp server and find a password-protected set of plans. You glance at the clock – it’s just after four in the afternoon now – and decide to take a poke at it.

“Jess,” you say into the intercom. “Can you come in here, please?”

Jess sends back her assent, and is around the corner and in your office in the next thirty seconds. You wave her to your side of your desk, scooting your chair back and indicating the password screen on your screen.

“I found this in some old project files. Do you know of anything in here that ought to be password protected?”

She shakes her head immediately, “No, all archived files should be automatically accessible to someone with your clearance level.”

Jess looks at you, her hands hovering over the keys of your laptop.

“Do you mind if I take a crack at it?”

“I was hoping you’d ask,” you tell her. You give up your seat for her, and Jess slides into it with a grin. “Knew there was a reason I brought you out here.”

“You could have done this on your own,” she says, tacking away. But she’s smiling at the praise.

“Not as fast as you will,” you tell her. It’s true. You’re a crack shot with a line of code, but Jess is a damn marksman. She has the file unlocked within ten minutes.

“Ha!” she says when the file starts to load onto your screen, allowing herself a little fist pump under your desk.

“Well done,” you praise again, already scanning the blueprints as they load. Jess gives you your seat back but stays by your side, going over the schematics with you.

“This is a medical device,” you say. “I think it’s an artificial heart?”

But it’s wrong. It’s too big, for starters. The largest artificial heart in operation is SynCardia’s 70cc model, and this is easily one and half times that size. And the chambers aren’t delineated enough, so there’s a large pocket in the center that’s open to what would be the chest side of the device.

“I’ve never seen a heart like this,” you say, scrolling down to the second page of blueprints. For some reason, the usual thrill of discovery is absent from your chest, a cold tendril of something dark in its place. This feels like somewhere you shouldn’t be.

The next page includes the model for something meant to sit inside that pocket in the middle of the heart. Jess takes a sharp breath in.

“Lena,” she says. She never uses your first name. “Lena, _look_.”

She points to the corner of your screen, and when you look under the section there, your breath catches.

There’s an illustration of a lump of something that should be entered into the pocket. It’s uncolored, as are the other drawings. But it’s labeled: element 126.

Kryptonite.

“Jess,” you say, willing your voice calm. “Go back to your desk, and search all the files older than this one in this database. Send any that are password-protected to me. Use my login.”

“Right away, Ms. Luthor,” she says, already in triage mode.

She knows what this means as well as you do. Whatever John Corben has become – that monstrosity that had eluded the Supers and terrorized the city – the technology that had made him that way came from L-Corp. From you. This is an entire public relations disaster waiting to happen.

At least you’re not thinking of kissing Kara Danvers anymore.

Eight o’clock rolls around before you glance at a clock again.

“You’d better not still be out there,” you say into your intercom.

“And miss playing spy versus spy in the corporate archives?” Jess’s laugh comes back. “Not a chance, Ms. Luthor.”

“Go home, Jess,” you say, smiling but firm. “And I better not see you tomorrow before nine AM.”

“Only if you promise you won’t stay past the double digits,” she says.

And from anyone else it’d be an unforgivable breach of decorum. From Jess, it just feels like affection.

“I’ll do my best,” you promise.

“Good night, then, Ms. Luthor,” comes Jess’s reply. You can hear her scraping together her things over the next minute or so, and then the sharp click of her heels toward the elevator.

You’re only alone for a few moments, though. Jess’s departure has faded into silence for all but a breath before there are suddenly two sets of footsteps rounding your corner.

And then Kara Danvers is in your office, slightly out of breath, with Jess skittering into view behind her.

“I swear I just blinked, and she got right past me,” Jess says, openly panting.

“I’m sorry, Lena,” Kara says at the same time. You have to squint a bit between them to focus on parsing everything.

“She is _so_ fast,” Jess reiterates.

You close your eyes and take a breath, holding up a hand to both of them. And then you rise from your seat, and all you can think about is finding a way to wipe the near-panic off of Kara’s face.

“Jess, will you make a note downstairs that Ms. Danvers is to be shown in right away whenever possible?”

“Really?” Kara straightens in shock.

Jess looks between the two of you. You raise an eyebrow at her, and she comports herself again.

“Yes, Ms. Luthor,” she says. Jess turns to leave, and you don’t miss the appraising look she gives Kara behind her back.

“Thank you,” Kara says, and you’re pulled back to her.

“Now,” you say, feeling more in control now that everyone has stopped talking over one another. “What can I help you with?”

“I think,” Kara starts. Stops. Starts again: “I think a friend of mine has gotten involved in something shady.”

And, reflexively, you brace to defend yourself.

“A friend?” you quirk an eyebrow at her. She backpedals, holding up both palms to you. Supplication, and you melt in the face of it.

“No, an actual friend,” she clarifies. “And now he’s missing. And I need to know – do you know a woman named Veronica Sinclair?”

You go absolutely frigid at that. Is there _nothing_ good in your life that Veronica Sinclair won’t worm her way into?

“She caters to people in your, um, circles,” Kara finishes. You lean back in your chair and do your best to only look half as derisive as you feel at the prospect of Kara being anywhere near Veronica.

“Tight dresses, tattoos like Lisbeth Salander?” you say. There’s contempt in your voice that thankfully doesn’t seem to phase Kara. “Yes, I know Roulette. We went to boarding school together, I never liked her.”

“I need to find her,” Kara tells you. You laugh.

“Well that’s the trick, isn’t it? Her little fight clubs stay mobile.”

“But do you know where she’s holding the next fight?” Kara insists. She’s wringing her hands hard enough to turn her knuckles white. “I wouldn’t ask if I had any other option.”

“I’m a Luthor,” you say, as if that will explain everything. Kara’s eyebrows pinch together in confusion, though, so you continue. “Of course I’m invited to her little pop up. Hold on.”

You know the number by heart, and dial it quickly, leaving your office phone on the receiver. There’s a pickup after three rings.

“This is Roulette’s line, how can I help?” comes a bubbly voice.

“This is Lena Luthor,” you say. Kara still looks scared, and eager, but doesn’t seem offended that you have Veronica’s number on mental speed dial.

“Oh!” the voice says. “One moment, please, Ms. Luthor.”

There’s a scuffle, and what sounds like a squeak of fear, and then Veronica’s smooth voice fills your office.

“ _Lena_ ,” she purrs. You roll your eyes at Kara, who thankfully gives you a small smile. “I was hoping you’d come around.”

“Yes, well,” you begin. You keep your eyes locked on Kara’s, willing her to know that what you’re about to do is an act for her sake. “You know I had to lay low for a while after the renaming. Can’t have those hounds in the press seeing me at an event they might find unsavory.”

“And you’re wanting to sneak away regardless,” Veronica praises. “That’s my girl.”

“I’d like to see you,” you say. You let your mouth wrap the letters up in low, sultry suggestion, knowing how Veronica has always lavished in the subtext. Ever since you were both sixteen and thought getting to second base in a janitor’s closet at school was the height of scandal. “Unfortunately, your latest email seems to have been caught in my spam filters. Can you remind me of where I can find you tonight?”

Veronica tsks on the other end of the line. You’re still looking at Kara, whose mouth is hanging open because she’s breathing heavily again. You push your luck, smile sharply at her, and raise one inquisitive eyebrow at her expression.

She swallows so hard you see her whole torso move with it.

It feels dangerous and undeniably _good_ , flirting wordlessly with Kara while you wrap Roulette around your finger in front of her. Your office chair has never felt more like a throne.

“Of course, pet,” Veronica says, and you know you’ve won her over despite the catty email you’d sent earlier in the week. “Check your phone, I’ll text you the details.”

She hangs up. Kara whooshes out a loud breath and looks suddenly away from you, over your shoulder somewhere. Your cell phone vibrates a second later, and you jot down the information she needs on a sticky note.

You walk around your desk to hand it to her. Kara takes the folded note between her thumb and first finger and points it at you for emphasis.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Not at all,” you say. Your voice is still low and a bit rough, and you catch Kara’s eyes flicking down to your mouth. “I’m sure you’ll be there for me when the time comes.”

She stands a bit taller at that. And _god_ how have you not noticed how tall she is before now? Kara stands as your equal despite the towering heel you’re sporting and her ballet flats.

“Count on it,” is what she says before turning on her heel and speeding out of your office.

In her absence, you can breathe deeply again, filling your lungs with the lingering scent of peaches in summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all you cool cats and kittens! Sorry for the delay here, but you know [gestures broadly at the state of America right now]. 
> 
> Anyway, here's another chapter. Hope you enjoy!

You’re prowling. Snapping heels, steely-gaze, hell in a silk shirt _prowling_ in the board room, because you’re _absolutely fucking livid_. And Luthor women only show two emotions: passive aggression to each other and actual aggression to everyone else, so your board is currently getting the latter in the form of an emergency meeting at two in the morning.

One of your board members was caught in the sting of Veronica’s little alien fight club, and you’re betting it was another who got her off the hook for the numerous felony kidnapping charges she’d managed to evade in the aftermath.

“I came to this board six months ago with a plan to turn the smoldering remains of world destruction back into a reputable company,” you say, standing imperious at the head of the conference table. “And your response was _unanimous_.”

It had been. Not that they’d had a choice: with Lex facing multiple life sentences and your mother in the wind, you owned what amounted to a controlling stake in L-Corp. The reference to their vote was for them as much a reminder of your ownership as their complicity.

“And then tonight,” you continue, scanning each of the twenty faces before you in turn. “I find out that two of you have secretly been undermining that plan since the beginning.”

“Two?” comes a question from the middle of the table. One of the overseas members, tinted the buzzing blue of a hologram, her eyebrows raised.

“Two,” you confirm.

The room dissolves into uncomfortable shuffling from the physically-present members and many more cleared throats and panicked looks from those here only virtually. You let them squirm for a moment, arms crossed under your breasts, chin tilted scathingly upward, as you search the faces around you for any that don’t show the surprise you’re expecting. There are a few, at least four. Far too many to be helpful. Or comfortable.

“Now,” you say after a moment. “This is going to come out. I know it, you all know it. The press sure as hell knows it. As soon as word breaks that one of you was arrested in the sting, it’ll be a free-for-all. So I need to know.”

You pause, letting the moment fester as you look over the board again. One-two-three, eyes-on-me, they all fall silent waiting for you to finish.

“I need to know who else’s name is going to show up on her guest list when some outlet publishes it above the fold this week.”

No one answers right away, and you don’t expect them to. Not in front of each other.

“You all have my secure line,” you say. “Thank you for your time.”

The holograms are the first to flicker out, leaving empty chairs dotted around your conference table. Those physically present let themselves out after that, a few of them speaking softly amongst themselves. When they’re gone, you write four names on a slip of paper and hand it to Jess, folded over itself.

“Draw up severances for these four, and keep them in your locked drawer,” you tell her, handing her the paper. Jess’s fingers close around the scrap and you hold it fast until she looks at you. “Not legal, Jess. You. Bring Hector in if you need help but don’t tell him what it’s for.”

Jess nods her understanding and leaves, and you’re alone again in the conference room, sitting at the head of an empty table.

The alert for Kara Danvers’s article about the raid pops up in your email later that morning. You read it through, too nervous to do a page search for your name. The knot in your stomach slowly unravels as you get to her conclusion and you haven’t featured at all. There are quotes from both Supergirl and an NCPD Science Division detective, the credit for the legwork and the bust itself placed solely with the latter.

It’s the second time, now, that Kara has failed to mention you in a way that would be harmful to both your personal reputation and L-Corp’s stock price. And you don’t know what to make of that.

“Ms. Luthor,” Jess’s voice in the intercom startles you out of your obsessing. “Mr. Seward for you. Are you available?”

Ramsay Seward (the Third, as if you cared about primogeniture) is one of the four names you’d handed her just that morning.

“Send him in, Jess. And stand by please.”

“Yes, Ms. Luthor,” she says. She opens the door for Ramsay not a few seconds later, closing them securely behind him when he’s stepped into your office.

He looks like his father: square jaw, marred with thick stubble, straight nose. Piercing brown eyes. And he’s graying prematurely, just at his sideburns. A handsome face, if it weren’t twisted just so with trepidation. He adjusts his cuffs, pulling them out of his suit jacket and shifting his weight between his feet.

“Ms. Luthor,” he says, nodding. Waiting for an invitation to sit.

“Mr. Seward,” you say. “How can I help?”

You do not offer him a chair. He swallows, touches the knot of his tie. Erects his spine so he stands a little taller. You lean back in your seat, crossing your legs at the knee and leveling him with an expectant look, unblinking.

“I may have information you need,” he says. “About the raid.”

“Oh?”

“I would need certain assurances, of course,” he says. He’s found his rhythm now, stepping forward, mistaking your trill of askance for intrigue. You let him.

“What did you have in mind?” you ask.

“I want to keep my seat on the board, for starters,” he says. He’s in front of your desk now, hands in his pockets and hips jutted out, his chin raised. “And I want an ironclad NDA from you, personally.”

You manage to stifle your laugh with a smile, flashing your teeth at him. He grins back, thinking he’s won. You press your intercom to page Jess.

“Jess, can you please bring Mr. Seward’s paperwork in,” you instruct. You maintain eye contact with him as Jess enters and leaves the severance package on your desk, facing you. She leaves silently, her own smile barely concealed when she turns to exit the room.

“I thought this would be more of a struggle,” he says. His tone is jovial. He even takes a seat, finally, tugging at the thighs of his slacks to make himself comfortable.

God, do you love this part.

You turn the paperwork to him and push it across the desk.

“I try not to make a habit of it,” you say, as he pulls the packet towards himself and starts to read. You fix him with a glare, so he’s caught in it when he looks back up.

“What is this?” he whispers. “Severance?”

“A very generous one,” you agree.

“Why would I sign this?” he asks, incredulous. Indignant. “I’m here doing _you_ a favor, and you want me to sign away everything?”

“That, and sign your own – what was it? – _ironclad NDA_ ,” you say. “And you will. Because we both know, Ramsay, that your involvement in racist extracurriculars isn’t the only notch in your belt.”

He gapes for a moment before his mouth sets in a hard line. Then he stands, abruptly, and slams his palms on your desk. You look at him with eyes narrowed in contempt, unflinching.

“I can’t imagine what Julia would say if she were to find out about your dalliances. You know how unkind California can be to prenuptial agreements. And how much less so they will be when the judge sees the security footage of you fucking your mistress in several of my conference rooms.”

“Fuck you,” he says. You laugh, loud and in his face, and he deflates at your lack of care for his anger.

“I hardly think more of that is going to solve your problem here,” you say. “Sign the papers, Ramsay. Tell me the other names, and then walk away with what’s left of your dignity intact.”

He does sign, in the end. You tuck the crumpled packet of papers into your own desk and smile at him as he goes grumbling and huffing from your office.

Two hours later, you receive an email from his corporate account with six other names. You rub at your forehead, eyes closed, before calling Jess in to prepare more exit paperwork. This is going to be a long week.

At 5:15 PM on Wednesday, Jess threatens to take every one of her not-inconsiderable (and contractually-protected) PTO days at once if you don’t leave the office for at least twelve hours. So you gather your laptop and intend to hide yourself away in your hotel suite to work in private, instead.

You make it to the lobby before you get a text from Jess, informing you of a reservation you have in half an hour. Apparently, your driver already has the address, and is ready to get you there on-time despite rush hour National City traffic.

“All set, Ms. Luthor?” Frank smiles at you in the rearview mirror.

“Were you in on this?” you ask him. You can’t bring yourself to be angry. The sun warming the lobby had warmed you, also, and you smile back at him.

“No, no,” Frank laughs. His gray eyes crinkle at the edges with his big grin. Frank has been your driver since you were fifteen, and is now more an uncle than an employee. “This one was all Jess.”

You hum, noncommittal. Frank laughs again.

“I’m sure you were appropriately reticent,” you say, but you’ve dropped your gaze to your phone, and Frank is pulling into traffic.

“Of course, Ms. Luthor,” he chuckles.

Frank does, true to Jess’s word, get you to the restaurant in time for your reservation. A squirm of obstinacy has you waiving off the hostess and opting for a high top in the bar area, though. She hands you a happy hour menu and leaves quickly, for which you’re grateful. You have your laptop and tablet out, and AutoCAD booting up, by the time the bartender comes around to take your order.

The happy hour menu is a mass of dumplings, and you order two different kinds along with a glass of New World chardonnay from up the coast in Napa. And it’s nice: you let the wine sit on your tongue as you squint at your half-finished doodle of a design, its sweet, fruity notes giving way in time to the spice of cinnamon and clove. It finishes a bit too buttery for your taste, but that’s not enough for you to order a different one, nor does it stop you from accepting a second glass when you’ve finished your first.

The second glass is just starting to buzz pleasantly in your brain when you’re interrupted.

“Lena?”

You turn your head, probably too fast. And there’s Kara Danvers, leaning on her elbows on the bar behind you and smiling that toothy smile of hers. She looks dressed for work, pressed slacks and a fitted dress shirt, her hair twisted up into a bun.

“I thought that was you,” she says. You smile at her, because it’s hard not to mirror the naturally big grin she always seems to have for you.

“Kara,” you say. “What a coincidence.”

There must be some trepidation in your voice at finding her here, because Kara rushes to soothe.

“I’m just waiting,” she says. “For Alex. My sister? We do this thing every month where she drinks like, _a lot_ of whiskey and I eat my way through the entire appetizer menu and we both complain about whatever.”

“Sounds like a good time,” you say, earnest as you can. The closest thing you and Lex ever did to what Kara is describing is when he used to show up drunk to your dorm room in college to bitch about your mother meddling in his projects.

“It is. I look forward to it every month,” Kara agrees. And she opens her mouth to say more, but her phone trills twice, and she holds up a hand to you, expression turning apologetic. She checks her phone and then frowns, an adorable crease forming between her eyebrows that you have the ridiculous, wine-fueled urge to smooth out with your thumb.

“And that’s me being stood up, again,” she says, mostly to herself. When she turns back to you it’s with another smile. “Looks like I’m flying solo tonight. It was great to see you again, Lena.”

Absent two glasses of wine and without the extremely high dose of fresh air you’ve gotten today, the whole thing would probably look just a little too neat. I mean what are the chances that you not only run into Kara Danvers here, but that she suddenly finds herself available not two minutes later?

But you _have_ had just enough to be bold, and you _are_ riding a little high on being out of the office, so when Kara turns to leave and flag down the hostess, you stop her.

“Kara, wait,” you say. “Why don’t you have dinner with me instead?”

“Really?” she says. Her face scrunches up in another grin, and it’s like looking at the sun. You squint a bit but hold her gaze, feel it ripple through your gut like she’s just worming her way physically inside you.

“Really,” you tell her. “You can’t possibly eat all those apps by yourself, please, sit.”

And so she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease


	7. Chapter 7

It’s easy to forget that Kara Danvers is an alien until she starts to eat.

Oh, not like that. There’s no serpentine tongue. She doesn’t unhinge her jaw. Her straight white teeth stay that way instead of morphing into fangs or whatever.

But she can, despite your indication to the contrary, eat her way through the entire appetizer menu.

There are _twelve_ different dumplings on it.

“My metabolism works differently here,” she tells you after you’ve watched her inhale three dozen of the things. “Less efficiently—” a frowning pause, then: “And more efficiently, in some ways, I guess? It’s hard to explain.”

“Sounds like a dream come true,” you find yourself laughing. Kara seems to pull light humor from you as easily as pulling pills from a sweater.

“Yeah, but it has its drawbacks,” she says, popping another jiaozi into her mouth.

“Such as?” you ask. You lean back in your chair and shoot her a disbelieving look. She chews slowly, lips a bit pursed and eyes narrowed in thought. She swallows before she speaks.

“Well, for one thing, I almost _literally_ ate my adoptive mother out of house and home on more than one occasion,” she ticks off on one finger, propping up her elbows on the table. You nod to concede the point.

“Alex won’t let me go to any all-you-can-eat places, for another,” she continues, raising her middle finger next to her index to keep counting. Her hand flexes, revealing a vein that runs from the gold face of her watch to the first knuckle of her ring finger.

“What?” you question, forcing your gaze back up to her face.

“She says it’s unethical.”

“Ah,” you laugh, because you suppose it would be.

“And it’s hard to feel actually full,” Kara ends, tapping her ring finger now to make three. There’s a sinewy sort of strength there that you definitely don’t make note of. “Like, I go from most meals feeling, I don’t know. Unsatisfied.”

She levels you with an imploring sort of look, that little crease making a repeat appearance between her eyebrows, and you get that impression, again, that she’s trying to convey something to you in a language that’s not quite equipped for it.

And you really need to stop at three glasses of wine, because the way she says _unsatisfied_ has you thinking things that are decidedly not related to food. You take a deep breath and set the thought aside, packing it away in a little box for further examination when you have the time. It’s just been a while, you reason, stamping the box with a big DO NOT OPEN marker and shoving it somewhere you hope it’ll stay.

“Well,” you say instead. “We can’t have that.”

“Oh, Lena, I can’t ask you to do that,” she says after you’ve flagged down the barkeep for seconds of everything.

It would be difficult to gentle over to her the fact that you could buy the entire menu here a hundred times over and still call the cost a rounding error in your weekly budget. And you really don’t relish the sort of distance the discussion of your wealth would put between you and Kara. So, you don’t mention it. Instead you wave your hand to dismiss her protest.

“You’re not asking; I’m offering,” you say. Kara runs her tongue over her teeth, considering. When she dips her head in acquiescence, you sigh out a nervous breath and smooth your skirt under the table.

Your curiosity gets the better of you about midway through her third helping of soup dumplings.

“I read your article this morning, in fact,” is how you begin. Kara swallows hard, looking sheepish.

“Oh,” she says. Like you’ve caught her at something scandalous. “Yeah, about that. I hope it’s okay that I didn’t mention you.”

You blink at her. She mistakes your surprise for disapproval and rambles on.

“It’s just, we never talked about it. And I told you I was there last night as a friend. And I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be publicly linked to Roulette, uhm. Despite, you know.”

Her cheeks color prettily, and she scratches the back of her neck with nervous fingers. You let her sit in her own embarrassment for a moment, because she’s cute when she’s apologetic. But soon enough you give her reprieve.

“Veronica and I have history, that’s true. But whatever she might wish, that’s all it is,” you say. The dig at Sinclair is not subtle, but if Kara finds it petty or unseemly, she doesn’t show it. “And being linked to her at this particular junction for L-Corp would have been—”

“Suspicious?” she asks. There’s such clear kindness, such open understanding in those blue eyes that you’re compelled to answer with the truth.

“Damning,” you correct her. “Confirmation of everything I’m trying to leave behind there.”

Kara considers your words, tapping the ends of her chopsticks against her chin and regarding you for a moment that seems to you far longer than it actually is.

“You want to do the right thing,” she says finally, shrugging and snagging another dumpling from the maze of steamer baskets your table has become. “I’d be quite the villain if I wanted to punish you for that.”

You huff out a laugh and look down at your hands. And you find that you’ve been twisting your fingers together so hard during this part of your evening that they’re aching now that you’ve stopped. They pulse now with your heartbeat, the blood rushing back to them. Looking down has let your hair fall into your vision, so when you look up again, you tuck it quickly behind your ear.

And you catch Kara watching the movement. The moment distills a bit, quieting as she stares. And you smile softly at her, let your fingertips graze down the back of your ear slower than you need to. She takes a slightly shaky inhale and looks away, fiddling with her glasses.

So that’s that, you suppose.

“I’m glad I ran into you,” Kara says once you’ve settled the bill and started to collect your things.

“You got lucky,” you tell her with a small laugh. “My assistant threatened to mutiny if I didn’t get some time away from the office today.”

“I’ll have to send Jess a card, then,” she says, flashing her teeth again in a grin. You think your jaw might be sore tomorrow just in sympathy, being near so many of her smiles at a time.

It’s not lost on you that she’s remembered Jess’s name. They’ve only met once, and then only very briefly in Kara’s haste to get to Roulette. Sharper than she likes to let on, this one.

“Listen, Lena,” she says once you’re out on the sidewalk together. The sun has started to set, nine o’clock nearing to mark the end of another long summer day, and you realize dimly, like a distant thunderclap just at the edge of your hearing, that you’ve spent nearly four hours with her.

It is by far the longest you’ve gone without working, sleeping aside, since you moved here.

It has you off-kilter, as though the earth has tilted beneath you for a moment. So, you’ll rationalize later, the mental vertigo is definitely the reason you’re not prepared to demure again when Kara continues.

“You think I could push that luck far enough to re-invite you to game night?”

Your brain’s got that stupid dream you had on speed dial, and after nearly four hours of looking at Kara’s smiling face, you find that you would, actually, very much like to see more of it.

“You’re not going to let that go, are you?” you ask. Kara shrugs her shoulders. You’re shorter than she is today, despite a three-inch heel. You wonder if you own one tall enough not to have to look up to look her in the eye.

“If you want me to, of course I would,” she says. “But I remember what it’s like, being the new girl in a strange new place. It’s a whole lot easier if you don’t do it alone.”

“Go ahead and send the details to Jess,” you say. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Kara Danvers takes that for the giant leap it is, and scrunches up her face in her biggest smile yet.

The next game night is on a Friday, two weeks later. You don’t get to go.

Instead, you take a late-night trip to the Luthor Children’s Hospital to survey the fact that half of it is in smoldering ruin. There’s been a gang committing crime across National City recently, armed with alien weapons. But it’s the first time they’ve targeted one of your holdings directly.

The police and fire departments have come and gone, signaling that the site is at least not radioactive. But a lot is missing, and still more is destroyed. So you had decided to oversee the start of the cleanup yourself.

“Put this on,” your Head of EHS thrusts a hardhat into your ribs when you enter the popup tent she’s using as a command post. “Are you wearing steel-toe?”

You had changed into a pair of black carpenter’s pants before heading over. A smoking heap of rubble is no place for an expensive pencil skirt, after all. And you’d twisted your hair up into a low, messy bun before entering the tent. But your boots, well:

“No, they’re just regular work boots,” you tell her. She digs around in a pile of equipment next to a card table that’s sagging under the weight of paperwork and tools.

“Put these on then,” she says, handing you a pair of rubber steel-toe shoe covers. “Not all of the rubble has settled, and I’ll be damned if my CEO gets her foot crushed this evening.”

You secure the covers to your boots first, just to have them out of your hands, and then scoop the hardhat onto your head. You’re still adjusting it with the gear at the back as you follow your EHS lead out of the tent and back into the fray.

The sun is setting, casting long shadows across the crags and piles of debris the attack left behind. Small teams are huddled around the break between the parts of the structure that are still standing and those that have been destroyed, crawling over the rubble like ants in their search for anything salvageable.

“Most of the damage was contained to the research wing,” the lead says as you walk. “So there were minimal casualties. A nighttime security guard was hospitalized, but no deaths.”

“That’s lucky,” you say. Your partner gives you a baleful look but doesn’t comment. Lucky for the kids, but she’ll be here for weeks to recover everything before the destruction can be cleared and the hospital rebuilt.

“I’m most concerned about some of the reagents that were housed here,” she continues. “This hospital was one of the country’s premier facilities for—”

“Genetic diseases, I know,” you say. You’ve come to a group of white-coated techs, carefully digging through the dusty remains of half a laboratory like archaeologists. “I used to be a scientist.”

“Right,” the EHS head says. “Well, there are some Class-1 chemicals that were kept here, under the floor in subterranean storage because it’s—”

“Easier to regulate temperature underground, I know,” you say, tone clipped now.

“Right,” she says again. “Look. I’m sorry, Ms. Luthor. It’s been a long day. And it’s going to be a long night.”

“Just show me how I can help,” you tell her. “This research used to be a personal project of mine. I’d like to help make sure what remains of it stays intact.”

“We need a bypass into the vault,” she says. “The guys who did this had a little run-in with Supergirl, so the way they got in is now buried under about six feet of rubble. We got a generator going to restore power to the door, but we need a workaround for the lock.”

“I can take a look at it,” you agree.

It takes the better part of an hour to get through the lock, which had scrambled its own code due to the power interruption. You end up having to take it apart in the hopes of triggering the mechanism to disengage manually. The sun sets completely in the meantime, and someone brings you a halogen light to work by.

Your Head of EHS whoops from across the room, sloshing coffee all over the dusty floor in fact, when you reconnect the wiring in the right order and the door hisses open. She’s as your side in an instant with a spare flashlight for you.

“Need my help down there, too?” you ask, laughing at her sudden enthusiasm.

“Figured you could help out. Someone told me you used to be a scientist,” she grins at you.

“Right,” you say, mirroring her own cadence from earlier in the evening. “Let’s see what those goons took from me, shall we?”

You’re about to step over the threshold when a soft whoosh catches both your attention, accompanied by some awed whispers from the surrounding team. You turn to see the source of the commotion.

And there, standing in the midst of your ruined lab, the only pristinely clean thing left in the whole building, is Supergirl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @rainaftersnowplease


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

You’ve seen her up close once before, Supergirl. But the last time, you’d been dizzy from the fast descent of your helicopter and near-asphyxiated from smoke. It’s a far different experience this time, watching the caped Kryptonian stand, hands on hips, in the middle of your destroyed lab. It’s irritating, the tip of her chin and the wide set of her shoulders.

After all the damage done here, to look so proud?

You cross your arms and attempt to look as imposing as you can, given the dust that’s accumulated on you while you’ve worked.

“It may be dangerous for you to go down there,” Supergirl says. You give her a wry smile and shrug, indicating the utter destruction around you.

“It’s dangerous up here, too,” you say, gesturing to your attire. “Hence the PPE.”

“We think they may have left something behind,” Supergirl says. She drops her fists from her sides and takes a step toward you, her cape swishing around her knees.

“We?”

She stops, one red boot halting on the ground hard enough to send microfractures through the linoleum.

“Uh, no. I mean,” she stammers. Then quickly, a mask falls over her features: she sets her teeth and stands erect. In the harsh halogen light her suit takes on a deeper hue. Dark ocean hues roil in her eyes. It’s quite something, you think, to stand in the way of a Super. Something hot and strong settles in your spine, some base part of your brain recognizing danger. You swallow hard, flexing your jaw to keep your mouth closed.

Was this the feeling that Lex had raged against, you wonder. The base recognition of something powerful and dangerous in the guise of something so seemingly human?

“I am trying to help you keep your people safe, Ms. Luthor,” Supergirl says. There’s no stammer now: “Let me.”

This is what you came to National City for, is your first thought. To be the Luthor who shared her city instead of trying to rule it. To prove that your brother had not been a foregone conclusion but an aberration. That the Luthor name could be safe, could be _good._ But it’s not that simple, you find. Lex is in your head, urging caution. _Danger, danger, danger_ blitzes over your skin as Supergirl comes to a stop in front of you.

It’s your mother’s voice that reminds you then: _Luthors do not shrink from the moment._

“Fine,” you say, clenching your nails into your biceps before forcing your arms to uncross. “But I’m coming with you.”

You hold out your hand to the speechless EHS lead, who plops her flashlight into your palm a bit shakily. And it’s only now that you realize: everyone in the room is watching this exchange like it’s a vivisection of old grievances before a viewing gallery.

You hold the Maglite out to Supergirl, handle out. And the Girl of Steel tilts her head to regard you with something of a smirk, taking the flashlight from you.

You follow her into the vault. The light from the halogens outside cuts a swath of the floor into bright view, but otherwise the cavernous space is dark as a tomb. You click your Maglite on and start into the darkness.

“Wait,” Supergirl says, grabbing your elbow. You’re immediately wrenched to a halt, your shoulder flexing uncomfortably with the strain of stopping. It’s one thing to understand conceptually how strong she is, and quite another to feel that steel hand clamp around one of your joints. It triggers another of those animal responses in your muscles. You tug uselessly against her grip before you can stop yourself, like a rabbit caught in a snare.

“Sorry,” she amends quickly, letting her hand fall. You resist rubbing your now-throbbing shoulder. “Just let me do a sweep for triggers first, please?”

“Seems I don’t have a choice,” you say.

“I can scan in low light with my x-ray vision,” Supergirl says, ignoring your jab. She squints and surveys the room. It doesn’t take long.

“There,” she says, pointing into the dark as though you can see a damn thing. “A laptop.”

“There are probably several of those in here,” you say. “This hospital runs everything on portable devices.”

“How many of those laptops should still be on and receiving a signal, though?”

The silent stillness of the room around you answers her question. A red light blinks then, in the direction Supergirl had pointed. A camera. Well, shit.

“You think they’re watching us?” you ask.

“Don’t see how,” your companion says. “All the guys who attacked the place are in custody now.”

The absurdity of the situation falls on you, then. Standing there in the dark with a superpowered woman, both of you quivering in fear of a blinking camera light.

It’s like a bad joke. How many CEOs and Superheroes does it take to close a single laptop?

“Can you see that it’s wired to anything?” you ask.

“No, it’s just the laptop,” Supergirl says.

“A laptop, I can deal with,” you say, and stride forward into the room toward the still-blinking red light. It’s at a desk, shunted off to the side. So you brush some dust off the chair there and sit, dragging the laptop over to you.

“Bye boys,” you say, smiling into the camera while your fingers clack at the keys. You cut the video feed quickly, but it’s always good to make sure. So you tug your lipstick from your pocket and break off a chunk of it over the webcam, obstructing it physically.

“Just don’t say anything you don’t want overhead,” you tell Supergirl. “I’ve turned off the microphone from here, but who knows what kind of failsafe they might have for recording.”

“You sure that’s safe?”

“Are you sure there’s not another device in here that it could be linked to?”

“Yes,” the answer is immediate, defensive.

“Then, yes, I’m sure,” you say. Supergirl gives a huff over your shoulder but leans down, hands on knees, to watch you work.

You steal a glance at her, your eyes drawn to the movement at first but sticking on her face. She’s pretty in profile, blue eyes pointed at your hands as they tap out commands and mouth set in a pouty sort of frown. Her jaw is sharp, neck a band of corded muscle that tapers elegantly into her shoulders before the suit obfuscates her skin.

But it’s not until her cape settles around her a half second later, disturbing the air with the scent of her, that your fingers cease their work to hover haltingly over the keyboard. Under the faint electrical burn of ozone and the clean smell of an oncoming storm – did she fly as high as the stratosphere to get here? – is something startling in its familiarity.

Peaches in summer.

“Ms. Luthor?” she asks, voice slanted quiet in concern at your stillness. You swallow your surprise and will your fingers back to their work, but she persists. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” you say, tone clipped. It sounds defensive even to your own ears, and you can feel Supergirl’s – you can’t think the other name just yet – eyes on you, searching. “Just need to concentrate for a moment.”

That part is true: you probably only have a few more minutes before whatever failsafe is programed into the laptop wipes it clean or destroys important system files to render the machine useless to you. And you force your focus back on that task now, delving into the laptop to find any clues you can as to the origin of its owners.

Unfortunately, you’re so focused on focusing that you fall into a very obvious trap.

You swear under your breath when the screen blinks black. Supergirl tenses beside you, her eyes tracking from your face to the screen as a winged, blue serpent slithers onto the screen. It contorts itself against the black background into the Supers’ crest, its head landing squarely in the middle of the icon. It freezes for a moment, before a spear appears from above and impales it.

The image then flickers, and disappears, the screen blackening to fade into the darkness of the room.

“That’s ominous,” Supergirl says after a moment, a nervous laugh in her voice.

“It’s dramatic,” you counter.

There’s a beat of silence between you. You look over to her while she’s occupied with the blank screen before you. There’s a too-familiar crinkle between her eyebrows, marking her discomfort.

Your next thought is that you’ve gotten it wrong. A scent and a furrowing of brows? Are these the keys to Supergirl’s identity? It can’t be that easy. Your brother had worked for years to discover Superman’s alter ego, with the power of a fantastically illegal surveillance empire at his disposal, and he’d never succeeded. The secret identity of your own Super falling into your lap like this is so neatly tied up that you half believe it’s got to be a trap.

“So what now?” Supergirl says. She sounds uncomfortable. Fallible. “Did you find anything out before, you know, all of that?”

“I didn’t get much,” you say. It’s not technically a lie. You can parse the Cadmus reference in the slain dragon where Supergirl probably can’t, but that’s not entirely new information to you. “I’ll have to do a physical inventory of the compounds here to find out what they took.”

The two of you look around at the dusty room, or what you can see of it in the dark. It’s going to take days to sift through the rubble safely. Even longer to find and catalogue all the destroyed and stolen items from the remaining ones.

“I can help with that, if you want,” Supergirl says.

“You don’t have more pressing matters to attend to than finding out which obscure chemical compound some thieves took from a children’s hospital?” you ask. Supergirl shrugs, fists her hands on her hips.

“Like I said, the guys are in custody. All the clues as to where they came from might be here,” she says. Suspicion flares in your chest, prickling. She’s not working alone, though she’d tried to hide that fact. You wonder at how much you’d be giving away by letting her stay.

“We could use her help, boss,” your EHS head pokes her head into the space. You straighten in the dusty chair at the reminder of your audience just outside the door.

“Bring in some more lighting, then,” you say. Supergirl’s face lights up in a smile. And maybe it’s because you’re looking for it now, but it’s the same smile you’d spent hours looking at over a heap of steamer baskets just a few weeks ago. You force the drop of your jaw into more orders to hide it: “And get a tech down here to put this computer in a cage. I want to look at it later.”

“You got it, boss,” comes the reply from your retreating employee.

“Thank you, Ms. Luthor,” Supergirl says. “I know this can’t be easy for you, to work with me.”

You laugh at her, and cast another glance to the empty doorway. You don’t have much time before your EHS head comes back with more lighting and an army of techs and cleanup workers to ruin the dark privacy of this moment.

“I thought I told you,” you say, picking over the words carefully. “Please call me Lena.”

Kara only has time for a quick, surprised inhale before you’re not alone in the room anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @rainaftersnowplease


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at my most powerful when I update after midnight, so enjoy that! I like how this one turned out; let me know if you do too!

To her credit, Kara comports herself quickly enough that none of your employees see anything but Supergirl when they start to filter into the room.

To _your_ detriment, she shadows you for the rest of the night in badly-concealed anxiety.

“If you’re going to hover, you can at least take notes for me,” is what you finally tell her after the first hour, thrusting your clipboard and pen into her hand. “I’ll ID, you can record.”

“Uh, sure,” Kara says. She catches your eye for the first time since the rest of the team had come in, and you can see the trepidation there.

Maybe it was cruel, telling her a Luthor knew her secret identity and then not giving her a chance to confront you about it. But Kara takes your direction readily enough, huffing a bit but poising the pen obviously enough above the page that you nod and smile and go back to sifting through the partially destroyed lab for any intact samples or compounds.

You’re working in the northwest corner, near a section of collapsed wall with a bored superhero floating indolently behind you, when it happens.

A few engineers had identified which of the masses of rocks could be moved safely, and you’re helping with that now, looking to find any salvageable (or at least identifiable) items that might lie underneath them. You shift the last of a pile over to get at the pocket beneath it, the blinking red light of the battery-backup on a medical cooler there promising some success at last.

And then suddenly, you’re on the unmarred wall next to the pile, caged between it and an immovable body. Your head slams against the wall and your hard hat goes slack and tilted on your head, cracked nearly in two. The bright flash of an explosion registers in your head before the sound of it rocks the enclosed space, rattling more debris down from the ceiling and dislodging.

“Lena,” Kara’s voice comes from somewhere above your downturned face. She sounds far away and fading. Your head lolls back to regard her, and you slump a bit in a sickening sort of vertigo. “Lena, are you okay?”

“Kara,” you croak. Her eyebrows pinch together in concern. And in your daze, this time you do reach up to rub at the little crinkle there with your thumb. She intercepts your hand before you can get there, snatching at your fingers and holding them away from her face. You whine out some kind of embarrassing sound at being denied. Her hand is warm around yours, gritty with the layer of displaced dust between your skin and hers. Your ears are ringing and you have to look away from Kara’s face to close your eyes against the vibration inside your skull.

“How hard did you hit your head?” she asks. There’s commotion behind her: techs and engineers and safety workers sifting over the remains of the collapse to make sure nothing is damaged further. “I missed it, Lena, I’m so sorry.”

“Missed what?”

You don’t hear her answer before your knees buckle out from under you and the world goes dark.

You wake slowly, your senses of smell and hearing coming back to you before anything else: antiseptic and the hush of low conversation. Then comes touch: the pinch of a needle in your arm when you try to move it twitchingly, and the rough slant of cheap sheets on your bare legs.

A hospital, then.

You open your eyes, and the light hurts. Right at the back of your skull. You groan and bring your fingers to the source of the pain. Find it obstructed by scratchy gauze.

“Easy, babe,” comes a familiar voice to your left. You squint in its direction and meet Sam’s concerned brown eyes as she rises from a low armchair to hover over you. “You’ve been out for a bit, hit your head pretty hard.”

“Sam?” you blink at her, disoriented.

“You really don’t have anyone more convenient to put down as an emergency contact?” she chastises, no honest admonition in the words. She runs a hand through her long chestnut hair. “You gave us quite a scare, you know. Doc said if it weren’t for the hard hat you’d have been in some real trouble.”

“How long have I been asleep?” you ask, trying to sit up. It hurts, but lying still has never been easy for you, grievous injuries or no. But before you can, Sam is easing you back down with firm pressure on your shoulders. She smells like an airplane: stale air and mint chewing gum. Your stomach clenches in affection. She hasn’t waited even a second to come to you, it seems.

“No, nuh-uh,” she says. You recognize her mom voice and chuff at her. “Don’t give me that, I flew the redeye to get here and oversee you getting better. You’re not checking out AMA this time, Luthor.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” you grouse at her instead, letting your aching head fall back against your thin, flattened hospital pillow.

“I’m not sure how long exactly. At least since I’ve been here,” Sam says. She draws the armchair closer to your bedside so she can sit again, seemingly satisfied that you won’t try to escape a second time. Her voice is soft again when she continues: “They said Supergirl brought you in.”

“Shit,” you say, closing your eyes. The night before comes flooding back to you: working on the lock, Supergirl’s unexpected appearance, the computer in the dark. The bomb she’d missed in her scan and the crack of your hard hat against the wall when she’d thrown you away from the blast of it.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“No,” you say. Sam laughs. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Bad concussion stories usually are,” she points out. You sigh, fixing your still slightly bleary eyes on the little grooves in the ceiling tile directly above you.

“I didn’t think it’d be this complicated,” you admit. “I mean I knew it wouldn’t be easy, mind, but.”

You stop. Sam waits, aware of when you need a moment to think and when you need her to jump in to carry on the conversation. You think about Kara, with her tailored chinos and bright blue eyes behind her glasses, and you think about Supergirl, with her wavy blonde hair and the strong set of her shoulders. It’s hard, now, so far away from either of them, to reconcile the two in your head. Though that might be the concussion, you suppose.

Sam doesn’t need to know that bit yet, anyway.

“When she came down,” you begin again. “All I heard was Lex.”

You don’t look over at Sam again, because you don’t want to see the worry and pity no doubt making homes in the lines of her face.

“But she was,” _disarming, flustered, gorgeous – no_ , “helpful. And so earnest. I didn’t think she’d be so easy to read, if I’m honest. Lex always ranted about how it was impossible to know what Superman was really thinking, whether he could be trusted.”

“Your brother is maybe not the best source for unbiased Super opinions,” Sam says. “But she did, you know, slam you into a wall so hard it knocked you out for half a day.”

You wave Sam off, your face pinching in pain when your IV needle tugs uncomfortably at your skin with the movement.

“She just moved me too quickly,” you argue. “Trying to get me away from the explosion.”

The moments after Supergirl had moved you quicker than your body could keep up are a bit hazy. Like you’re seeing them through fog, hearing her voice and your own underwater. A wave of nausea bubbles through your middle when you remember slumping over in her steely embrace. You clench your teeth against the feeling.

Sam doesn’t ask you if you’re okay, and you’re grateful.

Sam makes you stay the full three days the doctors want you for observation. You huff at her about it until she agrees to let Jess bring you something to do. On the second day, the doctors take the padding off your head and Jess arrives with an armful of contracts for you to look over. Your bed quickly becomes a mess of paperwork after that. Just a few more new partners, and you’ll have what you need to get production of your detection device underway.

It’s during one of these work sessions, Sam curled up on her armchair with her own laptop, that you get another visitor.

“Ms. Luthor,” a nurse at your door asks. “You have a visitor, if you’re feeling up to receive her.”

You read to the end of a paragraph before you look up at him.

“Who is it?”

“Looks like the name’s,” he pauses, looks at his clipboard to check. “Danvers?”

You feel Sam’s eyes on you then, and resist the urge to squirm.

“Go ahead and let her back,” you say. The nurse nods and smiles, closing your door behind himself as he leaves.

“Not a word, Arias,” you round on Sam. She smiles, her index finger worrying her upper lip and her eyes shining with something like victory.

“I didn’t say anything,” she says.

“You’re thinking so loud I can hear you from here,” you tell her.

“How long’s this been going on?” she asks. You roll your eyes and look pointedly back at the contract in your lap.

“It’s complicated.”

“With you?” she snickers. “I’m sure it is.”

You shoot her another wounded look, but her smile doesn’t abate. Before you can admonish her verbally, though, the door handle jiggles metallically and you have to cut yourself off.

Kara comes through already babbling, of course.

“Hi, Lena, I –” she cuts off, noticing Sam on the other side of your bed. She straightens, fiddles with her glasses. Takes half a breath and continues into the room, bringing a vase of fresh flowers with her.

“Kara,” you greet her with a small smile, aware of Sam’s eagle-eyed observance. “This is Sam Arias. My CFO, and a very good friend.”

You watch the two of them come together to shake hands at the foot of your bed. Kara is dressed more casually today than you’ve seen her before, in a pair of dark blue jeans and a thin red sweater. Her hair is pulled back into a bun, a few stray strands wisping against her neck. They make your fingers itch, and you turn a page of the contract in your lap, just to have something for them to do.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Arias,” Kara says brightly. Sam laughs in that easy way she has, charming and low.

“Sam, please,” she says, still shaking Kara’s hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Ms. Danvers.”

It’s a lie. You haven’t spoken about Kara to Sam since her first article about your detection device was set to come out. Kara looks over to you, her forehead crinkling in surprise. You shrug at her.

“I’d love to stick around, but I need to check in back east,” Sam says. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Uh, yeah,” Kara stammers, unused to Sam’s smoothness. “Likewise.”

She looks after Sam for a moment even after she’s left and closed the door again. You let her process, fixing your eyes to her face so that when she does finally turn back to you, you’re already making eye contact. She huffs out a nervous sort of breath at that.

“How’re you doing?” she asks softly. She puts the flowers on the little table next to Sam’s armchair. Red and yellow lilies and tulips. You wonder if she knows what they mean. Apologies and devotion.

“Did you really come to ask about that?” you ask back. You put down the contract in your lap, expectant. Kara doesn’t disappoint, her brow knitting down into indignance.

“Of course,” she says. “Whatever else we need to – look, I was worried, and this is my fault. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

You’re smiling now, from being right or from the actual sentiment you can’t be sure.

“I’m fine,” you say. “I’d have discharged myself already if it weren’t for Sam.”

“Good thing she’s here, then,” Kara says. You chuff out a laugh.

“Not you too,” you tease. Kara chuckles, puts her hands in her pockets and stands a little less rigidly, hips jutted out towards you.

There’s a beat of silence between you then as you look at each other smilingly. It’s a new Kara smile, softer, thinner. A gentle upturn on her lips that doesn’t even show her teeth but radiates affection. How you could ever have thought her dangerous seems preposterous now. Now that she’s warming the whole room like the sun.

“Will you sit?” you ask her, indicating Sam’s armchair next to your bed.

“Oh!” she trills. “Yeah, sure, of course.”

She rounds the bed and takes a ginger seat in the chair. You wonder, as she palms the armrests hard enough to sink her fingertips into little indents in the fabric, if it’s difficult for her to moderate her strength all the time.

“I’m used to it,” she says. You look up at her face, and she’s smiling still, but a little more sharply this time. You’ve been caught staring. “I broke _a lot_ of furniture when I first got here.”

She stands abruptly then. Before you can panic about the sudden change, though, she’s extending a hand to you.

“Lena Luthor?” she says, smiling wide enough to show her teeth now. “My name is Kara Zor-El.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @rainaftersnowplease


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic so far has been so good, and so incredibly thoughtful, and I just want to say thank you for that. You all make putting the little details into the story really worth it, and I'm very thankful.

You take her hand with a small laugh that you school shortly into as regal a frown as you can manage.

“A pleasure, Ms. Zor-El,” you say.

“Kara, please,” she says, smiling wider. Her hand is warm around yours, her grip firm but not uncomfortable. Her fingertips dig into the back of your hand, and you’re not the first one to pull away.

“I’m sure you have questions,” she says. And you do, but you’re not sure now is the right time to ask them, despite the curiosity beating almost physically against your ribs with your heartbeat.

“How many of them would you answer for me, I wonder,” you say instead.

“You won’t know until you ask,” Kara says, sitting again and leaning back in the armchair. She’s the picture of ease at first, legs held apart and elbows on the armrests of the chair. But the longer you regard her in silence, the more she starts to fidget and squirm. You suppress a smile at her inability to sit still.

“Look,” she says finally, leaning forward in the chair, elbows on her knees to implore you with her hands as well as her words. “Here’s what I think: your brother, my cousin? They got it wrong. We can do better. Imagine what we could do if we worked together.”

If the prospect of attending game night had been thrilling, this is being launched into space. It’s missing about four stairs in a row. It’s your heart feeling too big for your ribcage, pumping loud at the possibility. You can’t help the big grin that settles into your jaw, the pull of her proposition manifesting its own kinetic energy in your body.

“Together we could change the world,” you say.

You do, over the course of Kara’s time in your hospital room, ask her some questions. She tells you how she missed the bomb in the lab, and you learn that lead stymies her x-ray vision. And you see the ghost of fear hover over her features when she describes the trip from the lab to the hospital after you’d collapsed in her arms. It does something twisty and not entirely unpleasant to your gut, seeing her worry for you flicker quickly over her face.

She also has information for you that she volunteers, specifically about what was behind the bomb, in the little cooler it was meant to destroy. Most of the contents had been unsalvageable, but what had been recovered was a cache of specialized testing equipment. Specifically for nucleoprotein identification.

“I don’t know why they’d try to destroy something like that,” Kara admits.

“They’re usually for virus testing,” you say. You tap your pen against your bottom lip, running through the uses for them in your head. “That lab was running a project on viral load for various common illnesses, developing new, cheaper testing technology. It’s important work, but it’s hardly groundbreaking. The genetic and cancer research being done there is a far more expensive target, if we’re being honest.”

“What kind of viruses were they developing tests for?” Kara asks you. Her own brow is furrowed in concentration, her mouth set into a handsome professional frown. “Maybe they’re using your tech for some biological weapon?”

“There’d be no need to use mine in particular,” you argue. “It’s not as though the tests for most of these things don’t exist otherwise. We weren’t breaking new ground, just improving on the old testing standards.”

But you do, at her insistence, go through the virus tests you know were in development there. The lab had won a grant from the World Health Organization for a quicker Ebola test, and you think Dengue was on the list as well. Then there were the respiratory infections: influenza, Legionella, Strep. It’s too big a list to be useful without more information.

“Well, they’ve been running around with alien weaponry. Do any of those diseases affect aliens?” Kara asks. You hum at her, considering. Exobiology isn’t your area of expertise, nor is it really anyone’s for that matter.

“I don’t know,” you admit. “Can you? That is.”

“I can’t catch anything,” Kara says, saving you from more embarrassing stammering. “At least nothing I’ve ever come across. I can’t even get food poisoning.”

You can’t help the little grin at that, wondering how she knows. You’re sure there’s a story there.

It’s also readily apparent that you’re not going to figure this out with what information you have right now. What’s not apparent is why, exactly, that fills you with regret rather than spinning your brain off in a dozen different directions looking for the information you _do_ need.

That’s a lie. The easy, stark truth of it is that working out a puzzle with Kara is distractingly, dangerously _fun._

“But what’s true for you might not be endemic to all aliens,” you reason. And you’re smiling fairly wide now, letting the thrill of investigation expand in your lungs until it bubbles over. “I mean not everyone gets superpowers from the sun, either.”

And Kara gets this almost glassy look in her eyes, bites her lip softly through a half smile at you.

“What?” you ask, suddenly self-conscious. You can be too much sometimes, you know: too eager, smile too wide, mind running too fast. _Luthors are always in control_ says your mother in your head.

But Kara just shakes herself out of the look with a physical shake of her head and doesn’t mention if you’re being weird.

“Nothing,” she says, voice pitched a bit higher than usual. “That’s a good point. I can make some inquiries with the CDC, see if they’ve got any human diseases on the radar that have been affecting aliens?”

“I’ll take a look back through the archives in R&D, see if I can’t uncover something there as well,” you offer in return. You’re not looking at Kara anymore, your mind already spinning through a list of research groups you should start with. It’s only when she laughs, so softly you’re sure she hasn’t meant to let it escape, that you flick your eyes up to regard her again.

You find her looking back at you already, blue eyes shining and half her mouth up in a smile that makes your thin hospital sheets suddenly too warm around your lower half.

“Still nothing?” you ask, dropping your voice low.

“You’re invested in this,” she says like it’s a compliment. Like your poorly disguised hyperfixation on any and all puzzles is endearing rather than uncouth.

“Someone blew up a children’s hospital I own yesterday,” you deflect. “Of course I’m invested.”

Kara keeps smiling. “You were blown up yesterday, too. You don’t think that warrants a day off? Or at least more than twelve hours?”

“No,” you say. It’s the truth, but you say it with a smile, hoping it sounds like a joke. Kara looks convinced, or at least entertained, by your answer, laughing again and shaking her head.

“Fair enough,” she says, laughing still. She takes a glance at her watch and grimaces. You’re not the only one losing time when the two of you are together, it seems.

“Back to the grind?” you ask her. She looks back up to you, apology shining clear in her eyes.

“Yeah,” she says, sheepish. “This isn’t exactly my assigned beat. But there’s got to be a story here, and if we find it, my editor won’t be able to ignore it.”

She stands, and rummages in her back pocket for her wallet. Her belt buckle catches the light as she twists, drawing your eyes for a moment before you can stop yourself. Her pant legs tighten around her thighs when she slips her fingers into her pocket, and you will deny the way your eyes widen at the stretch of fabric over the corded muscle there for the rest of your days.

“Here,” she says, thankfully after you’re able to avert your eyes to a more appropriate place. She holds out a little white card to you. A business card, you realize, with her name embossed in blue on the side facing you.

She towers over you, standing so close to your bedside while you recline. You look up into her smiling blue eyes and feel terribly, pleasantly small before her.

You take the card.

“That’s my personal cell number,” she narrates. You swipe a thumb over the shiny blue _Kara Danvers_ in the middle of the card, letting the texture of the ridges there ground you a little. “If you need to get ahold of me, or if you find something you want me to investigate with the CDC, just let me know. It’s always on.”

“I’ll do that,” you agree. Kara huffs, and it’s a happy sound. She nods next, with some finality, rocking up onto her toes for a bit so the nod bounces through her whole body. You can do nothing but smile fondly at the unconscious gesture. So effusive, your Kryptonian.

“Awesome,” she says. She rounds your bed and walks backwards to the door, still talking. “And please let Sam know it was nice to meet her again, for me, if you would.”

As though Sam isn’t going to demand a play-by-play of the entire – you glance at the clock above the door – two hours you’ve spent together. That you’ve lost time with Kara is, you note distantly, not as much of a surprise now as it had been the first time.

“Of course,” you nod. “And Kara?”

“Yeah?” she pauses, hand on the doorknob behind her. You hold her gaze and you swear you hear the metal of it creak in the wood, as though she’s squeezing it just a bit harder than she should. The thought, even if you’re only imagining it, makes you bold.

“Thank you for coming. It means a lot that you did.”

“Oh,” she says dumbly. Her free hand comes up to her face, fingers fiddling with her glasses. A pretty red blush crawls up her cheeks and settles there. “Well, yeah. What are friends for?”

She slips out the door with another smile.

You hear her trill Sam’s name just before she closes the door, and you take a breath to ready yourself for your friend’s return to the room. And sure enough, in the next moment, Sam is catching the closing door and pushing back into the space. She latches the door carefully behind her and then turns to you, a coy sort of smile on her face.

“She _is_ hot,” she accuses.

“How are things _back east_ ,” you counter.

“Great,” she says, not a trace of shame in her voice. “The nanny says Ruby’s already working on her homework, and my number two has miraculously managed to hold things together for the last twelve hours. Tell me about your reporter.”

You run your tongue against the back of your bottom teeth, considering and keeping eye contact with Sam. Your look would wilt just about anyone else, but Sam has never been one to cower before you. It’s what drew you to her, all those years ago, when Luthor Corp had bought the company she’d been working for, and you’d seen her at work. Elbow deep in earnings reports at midnight on a Tuesday, you’d watched her fight for her fellow employees, justifying their jobs with an equal mix of obvious affection and ruthless metric evidence.

 _Her,_ you’d thought, as your man overseeing the takeover had rubbed at his eyes in fatigue. _I want to work with her._

And you do consider, briefly, telling Sam everything just to have someone to explain the utter batshittery of the last couple of days to. But you’d discovered Kara’s secret almost by accident. It’s not yours to spread around.

“There’s not much to tell,” you say. “She’s offered to help with finding out who’s behind the attack on the hospital, says she has some contact at the CDC who might be useful in telling what they were after.”

“Uh huh,” Sam says. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“There’s nothing else there, Sam,” you say. Your own lingering glances don’t make for any honest romantic tension, after all. And getting involved with Kara would be unwise, especially after the revelation of the night before.

“I don’t see anyone else from National City coming to visit you,” Sam points out.

“I haven’t exactly been a social butterfly since I got here,” you laugh. “I spend more time in the office lately than out of it. I only know Kara as well as I do because she’s reported on L-Corp a few times.”

Sam crosses her arms, unamused with your deflections and honing-in on where you’ve slipped.

“And there’s no reason in particular that a cute, blonde reporter with legs for days just _happens_ to be the first person to get exclusives with Lena Luthor in a year?”

You shake your head and look away, and Sam smiles with her teeth sunk into her bottom lip.

She’s got you there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @rainaftersnowplease


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas, to those celebrating! Stay safe and warm, my friends.

The gala is actually Jess’s idea.

You gather your trio of assistants to you when you’re back in the office on Tuesday. Missing an entire weekend _and_ a Monday has you behind, and with the added issues the attack at the children’s hospital, you’re all up to your necks in work now.

The board will never approve the amount of money it’ll take to rebuild the research ring without outside funding, certainly not this early in the fiscal year. And you don’t want to use what political capital you have on it, since you’re still in the midst of rooting out the chaff from the wheat there anyway.

“What if we did a charity drive on some of our consumer products?” Hector says. He’s sitting on your couch next to Alana, files and both their laptops covering your coffee table. The little vase of orange and red flowers Kara had brought you stands in the middle of it, a little stalwart splash of color amidst white and gray. “Put out a release that X% of sales will go to the effort?”

Hector Cardozo is a local guy, at least to the state. Undergrad at Berkeley, and then, just to piss off his Bear-blooded family, law school at Stanford. He’s tall and a bit wiry – your first quarterly bonus to him had been your personal tailor’s phone number, after he’d complained about having trouble finding slacks to fit his narrow waist and long legs. Hector’s jaw is pleasantly square and always clean-shaven, but his brown eyes are always soft. And he keeps his black hair shaved almost to the quick in a well-edged fade. Too short for a courtroom, which is why he’d jumped at the chance to work for you when you’d asked him to be your personal legal advisor. He’s barred in California still, though your own work keeps him too busy most of the time for him to take on much of the pro bono work he loves: representing homeless kids in the city in petty crimes and housing cases. So you give him a block of time off each year to get stuck into it, separate from his other PTO. It keeps him in good spirits and his legal mind fresh.

“Might take too long,” Jess says from the other end of the room. She’s turned the visitor’s chair at your desk around to face the couch, perching there with her legs crossed up on the seat, her own computer in her lap. “If it were closer to a major gifting holiday, I’d say go for it.”

Hector nods to concede the point. Jess is technically his boss – in addition to being your cybersecurity advisor, she’s also your lead assistant now. It doesn’t seem to bother him, which you’d worried about. Jess is brilliant, but her BS is a far cry from his JD academically. It wouldn’t have been the first time that credentialling had screwed up a working relationship like theirs, so it’d been a pleasant surprise when he’d warmed to her almost immediately.

They’re thick as thieves now.

“We could do a call for investors,” Alana offers. “Short round, three-month bidding timetable. See what we can drum up?”

Alana is a bit of a mystery to you, even now. She’d been your mother’s assistant before she was yours, helping Lillian or whomever she’d tasked with handling west coast Luthor Corp business at turns. But she’s nice enough, anticipatory and hard-working. You know she has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA, but her accent tells you she grew up back east, maybe Maryland. Her personnel file ends in her past with a close adoption when she was sixteen, here in California. She’s short, around Jess’s height, with long black hair she keeps perpetually up in a severe, well-wound bun and chilly hazel eyes always shining behind cat-eye glasses.

Jess shoots her down, too.

“We just had a call for investors for the alien detection device, and that was for something that’s going to be profitable. No way we get the major players involved in what’s essentially philanthropy so soon after that.”

“You have any suggestions of your own, or are you just here to shoot ours down?” Hector laughs from his seat, but there’s an edge of frustration in his voice too. This is the last item on your team’s agenda for today, and you’ve had them sequestered in your office dealing with the rest of what you’d missed since early this morning. You glance at your watch – it’s just after seven in the evening now.

“Come up with better ideas and I won’t have to shoot them down, Hec,” Jess says. She rolls her eyes, and Hector purses his lips at her but says nothing.

“Enough, you two,” you say. Hector looks sheepishly away from Jess, but _she_ just turns to you with a smile.

“I think something more public would be better,” she says. “Feel like throwing a party, Ms. Luthor?”

It’s not a bad idea. You’ll get some traditional investor types to come and maybe invest, but National City is also home to rich people who aren’t business magnates: sports players, studio executives, and the like. The sorts of people who love to be seen giving generously to a local cause like a children’s hospital.

“A gala fundraiser is a great idea,” Alana chimes in. “I have a few contacts on Guitar Row I could pull in, for entertainment or for potential guests.”

You’re not a fan of formal parties, really. This is the option that would involve the most direct work from you personally, especially the night of the event, too. But it _is_ the best plan any of you have come up with on such short notice as you have.

“How quickly can we set it up?” you ask.

“Give us three weeks and we can have everything ready, I think,” Jess says. “A month if you want anyone from any of the baseball teams. None of the local teams are making the playoffs this year, so their season will be over by then.”

“Make it a month,” you say. “We’re going to need a pretty penny for this one. Better to get everyone we can in attendance.”

You close the file folders on your desk and click your laptop into its shutdown routine. Jess and Hector look at you in puzzlement. Alana is already clacking away on her own computer, presumably with the contacts she mentioned. But you stand and regard your brain trust with a smile.

“We’ll call it a night here,” you tell them. “We’ll have our work cut out this week getting started on a gala, not to mention public remarks about the attacks. Go home and get some rest, and we’ll pick back up in the morning.”

Hector actually shakes his wrist and brings his watch to his ear to make sure it’s still wound. You have to suppress a smile at that.

“The sun isn’t even down,” Jess says. She keeps her voice even, but eyebrows are pinched down almost in concern. And you suppose you’ve earned that, having never left the office before midnight except when she’s extorted you into doing so since she arrived.

Doesn’t mean you’re going to admit it.

“Your powers of deduction are astounding, Ms. Hoang,” you say. One of them even twitches, just at the edge in an aborted sort of wink. She wants to roll them. If you were alone, you’re sure she would. “Go pick up dinner of your company cards – I’ll approve the expenses myself. As a thank you for helping me catch up today.”

“That’s very kind of you, Ms. Luthor,” Alana says from her seat. She sounds surprised, but all three of them probably are. She and Hector start clearing your coffee table while Jess unfolds herself from her seat to inch closer to your desk.

“Are you doing more investigating tonight, boss?” she whispers. You flash a glance behind her, where Hector and Alana are busy packing up and not paying the two of you any mind.

“Yes,” you admit. “And no, you can’t stay and help. Go home, Jess. This week is going to be hellish, you know that.”

“I do, Ms. Luthor,” she says. And she’s dangerously close to impropriety here, with the others in the room. You allow Jess more freedom than almost anyone else in your life, but you do have to maintain your authority with the rest of your employees. “And I also know you haven’t been home before midnight since I made you leave early a few weeks ago. And I know you’re still concussed, and –”

“Jess,” you whisper, a bit harshly. She thins her lips into a line to show her displeasure, but she does stop talking. “I appreciate the concern, really. But this isn’t up for discussion.”

She nods. Jess knows when to push, and this isn’t the time.

“Yes, Ms. Luthor. Have a lovely evening.”

“You too,” you say. And Jess smiles, genuine if a bit sly.

“How could I not? Dinner on the boss tonight,” she laughs.

You let the three of them out of your office while you finish packing up your own things. It’s September now, the days not quite as long as they were in your first months in National City. The reds and oranges of the sunset are starting to streak your office floor now as the clock ticks closer to seven thirty.

After you shrug into your jacket, you eye the balcony for a moment. You really don’t make use of it – your work keeps you facing steadily away from it at almost all times. It’s a beautiful evening: clear reddish sky throwing pretty colors off the glass facades surrounding you. And you know that if you look at just the right angle, you can see the coast in the distance, that you’re up just high enough in your office to see where the sun will sink over the horizon on the water.

And what the hell. Whatever these mysteriously armed thugs are after will still be there after you’ve let yourself unwind. So you pour a couple fingers of scotch from your office stash into a crystal tumbler and head outside.

California is growing on you. There’s heat here, but it’s not the same oppressive blanket of humidity as back in Metropolis. It’s a heat that burns rather than smothers. Burns like a magnifying glass of publicity sometimes, but at others just like the pleasant burn of good scotch drunk straight. It’s like that today, and you lean your elbows on the railing and dangle your glass over the edge to take in the dying sun.

It’s difficult, even now, almost a year removed, not to imagine how Lex would advise you now. You know that his indulgence for you had been entirely self-serving. You’d probably known it all along, deep down. He’d imagined you a high-level sycophant. Someone fun to bounce ideas off of, to include in his schemes and tease with little hints of power he’d never let you have. But you were never a peer. Never a sister, really, except when he could play off your weakness for familial affection to his own ends. The young, welcoming brother who had spirited you away to a treehouse for safekeeping had given way to a sullen young man and then a cruel megalomaniac.

He’d indulged you when you’d begged him to, or when you’d caught him in one of his more magnanimous moods, though. He’d poured over your designs and equations and theories with the same manic focus that gripped him later for his world-ending crime spree. The same genius that had altered the very physical laws of the world had corrected your calculus and anticipated problems in your designs. And he was your brother, for all his faults. The guy who’d offered to ruin the family of the first girl who broke your heart, who’d turned up at your dorm in college with scotch and a smile after finals week. Who, when your father had died and your mother mourned him, had snuck up to your room with a bottle of expensive champagne to toast with you to the end of a tyrant of your childhood.

You’re not allowed to mourn him. That kind of sucks no matter the weather.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got something out for Supercorp Sunday! Go me, etc.
> 
> And wow, guys. Over 10k hits on this little thing. This is the most eyes anything I've ever written has had on it, and I'm really, really flattered. I hope it continues to entertain. Thanks for reading!

Wednesday sees you sequestered in your office again, this time with only Jess. Hector and Alana are knee deep in more board member research and gala prep, respectively, leaving Jess to help you field the myriad press requests that have resulted from your exciting night at the children’s hospital.

“We’ve got half a dozen personal interview requests,” Jess narrates from her tablet. “NC Times, of course. But the Chronicle wants you to sit down, too. And then there’s the TV news: KTNC, MSNBC, CNN. Looks like with the attack on the hospital and you landing in another hospital, the situation with the alien weapon gang has gone national.”

You have a headache. You’re not allowed to drink coffee until your doctor clears you of concussion symptoms next week. You shouldn’t have had the scotch you did last night, either, but what the doctor doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Jess disagrees, and has seen to the banishment of all things caffeinated from your office. You rub at the bridge of your nose and try to will the pain coming from both your temples to abate.

“What do you think, national only?”

Jess hums, dissatisfied, “No. Well, we could do mostly national. But I think picking a hometown paper would be good, too. The Times has the largest readership nationally, but CatCo has them beat in the city itself.”

“Has CatCo even asked for an interview?” you ask. This isn’t something they would normally tackle in-depth, but maybe that’s changing. Kara’s been writing about tech more and more as the weeks have gone on, for one. And they did that full cover spread on the attack on the president.

“No, but I’m sure it’s coming,” Jess says. “It’s only nine thirty.”

“Let’s table this, then,” you say. “I still have to look at the notes the board sent back on the latest round of contracts for the device. We can deal with the press decision after lunch when we have all the requests in.”

“Of course, Ms. Luthor,” Jess says. She swipes her hand across her tablet to throw the marked-up contracts in question from her screen to yours. “Looks like most concerns are budgetary, which is good.”

A quick scan of the notes for the first contract sees that validated. This is pretty common. The terms of any contract like this are fairly standard, and the devil is in the compensation breakdown. The board wants to pay less than what’s been proposed by your prospective manufacturers, of course.

“Do we have any notes from current partners about cost comparison?” you ask.

Jess nods and flicks more notes from her screen to yours, humming affirmation. You tuck back into the minutiae of running your company, and the monotony is a welcome reprieve for your pounding head.

You make more use of your balcony in the evenings. It’s a pretty place to think alone. Less suffocating than your sterile hotel suite, and more private than propping up a bar. And, as the sun starts to set earlier and earlier in the evening, you start making excuses with yourself to stop working earlier and earlier, too.

Miracle of miracles, your massive company continues to run just fine even though you’ve stopped working until midnight every day. And so you find yourself a couple of weeks later, your laptop off and your phone left on your desk at six-thirty, pouring yourself a glass of whiskey in preparation to catch the last of the sun out on your balcony before it sets completely. You’ve got your scotch glass dangling from your fingers when you turn around, and only just manage to keep hold of it and a neutral facial expression when you look out your window.

From inside of the glass you can’t see her face for a moment, so you get the full effect of Supergirl hovering just beyond your balcony railing, backlit by the red sunset. She’s darkened into a silhouette for a moment before your eyes adjust, her cape and hair billowing softly in the receding Santa Ana wind, her broad shoulders cut into sharp contrast against the skyline. She’s utterly ethereal. Otherworldly. And you have to swallow down a heavy breath before you can casually walk out to her.

But she’s more beautiful up close, you realize. Half a smile turning up the side of her mouth, eyes a shining cobalt and just as magnetic. You feel her gaze cut through you and there’s an entirely too pleasant kind of vulnerability in looking up and letting it.

“Hey!” she says when you’re settled against the railing, as though she’s completely unaware that she looks like a sun god come down from on high. As though the peppy affection in her greeting has been sparking on her tongue all day, waiting for you to show up and receive it.

“Supergirl,” you tip your drink to her and don’t suppress a smile of your own. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well,” she says, pausing to float close enough to lean her forearms on the railing next to you, her body dangling down over the street below. She looks up at you like she has a secret she’s just dying to share. “I have some news for you. About, you know.”

She waggles her eyebrows, and it’s so absurdly adorable that you have to hide a laugh in a sip of scotch.

“CDC said they don’t have record of any viruses that affect all aliens categorically,” she says. “But! My guy there _did_ tell me that they’ve been working with the FBI regarding possible terrorist activity involving the creation of a virus that _could_ affect only aliens and not humans.”

“A biogenetic weapon,” you supply. Kara nods, excited about you verbally connecting the dots as you continue. “That’s what they were after – the testing material is for testing a virus they’re creating, not for testing an existing pathogen.”

“Exactly,” she says. She waves her hands while she’s speaking, and you’re reminded with a little lurch of your stomach that she’s leaning on the suicide side of a 40-story building. Knowing someone who can fly is more nerve-wracking than you’d anticipated.

“So I thought,” she continues, oblivious to your inner turmoil, “we should take a look at what kinds of viruses the tests behind the trap would test for, and maybe start there? Look for things you’d need to genetically engineer them. I’m sure L-Corp has all kinds of records on what affects different ones, right?”

You do, and you’re excited to unravel this mystery a little further with your superpowered companion, truth be told. But you’re also not above a little ribbing.

So you cock an eyebrow up at her and take another lingering sip from your glass before coolly wondering, “I’m a Luthor, so I must have information about biological weapons development, then?”

Kara’s face goes slack for a moment before what you’ve said hits her. She sputters something of an apology for a few moments until you can’t keep your smile hidden any longer.

“You’re teasing me,” she says. She sounds almost proud, underneath the indignance in her accusation. You’re not going to tell her that she probably should be, for getting you to joke about your family at all. She’s still softening you, apparently. It’s not as troubling as it once was. There’s no harm in it if you’re alone, you reason.

“I was,” you admit. “And it’s a good idea. I’ll have our medical research division take a look and compile a list of components. We can pick a few of the rarer or highly-regulated ones, use them to track down this gang.”

Kara leans on one elbow, propping the other up to grasp at an imaginary pipe at her mouth, lip jutted out as though she’s blowing smoke. She squints one eye and pretends to jab her imaginary pipe in your direction approvingly.

“Yes, indeed, Watson,” she says. “You’re quite right, that’s where we should start.”

“Oh my god,” you say, managing only just not to snort into the last of your scotch. “Stop the presses, the hero of National City is a massive nerd.”

And then, because Kara doesn’t look cowed in the slightest and you feel safe from prying eyes this far from anyone else, you go on.

“Also, I’m _definitely_ the Holmes in this relationship.”

Kara laughs loud enough that you worry all over again about her holding onto the edge, but you won’t deny yourself the buoying feeling of pride in your chest at having elicited the sound.

You text Kara for the first time the next morning, to let her know that you have the list of components from your medical division. She sends back a string of emojis that you have to Google to parse, but you get the gist that she’s excited and intrigued. You also get a picture of half her smiling face next to a very excited-looking Doberman around the lunch hour, captioned _his name is Pickles!!_ with another string of exuberant emojis in accompaniment. It’s absurd and delightful, and you don’t respond to it.

In any case, though, she visits you again in the cape that evening, already sitting on your railing when you finish packing your things at the end of your workday.

“You know you could come through the front door,” you say. Kara swings her feet like a child, already smiling when you open the door as though she’s been waiting to meet you here all day. And it’s nice, being expected like this.

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “But I like to stretch my legs after work. Er, so to speak, anyway.”

You imagine she does. When she’s given more freedom as a reporter, she’s going to be a force to be reckoned with. She can hardly sit still on your balcony railing now, knocking her heels against the little wall there in a beat you can’t quite follow.

“Is that okay?” she asks. “I can just be Kara when we speak, if that’s better for you.”

Your brow furrows. This feels like a test. Kara just looks at you, though, open and still smiling as though she has only your comfort in mind.

“You’re always Kara, though,” you say. “Cape or not, you’re the same person.”

She isn’t expecting that. The beat of her heels on the glass ceases, and in the windy stillness of the space in the absence of her staccato beat, you have the room to feel as though you’ve failed whatever test she was proctoring.

“You said you had a list of compounds?” she asks then. You let her change the subject.

“Yeah, a few. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty ubiquitous in virology research. But my head of medical R&D let me know that we should really be looking for the equipment and ancillary materials they’d need. I’ve composed a list for you.”

“Sweet,” she says. You hand her the printout you’d prepared and lean next to her with your back against the railing while she looks it over. That crease between her eyebrows forms after a few seconds, and she looks like she’s sounding out a few of the words silently, her lips moving subtly as she continues to read.

“I’ll admit,” she says after a fashion, “this kind of thing isn’t my forte. Human biology is weird. The _simplest things_ hurt you.”

“Says the woman allergic to a rock,” you shoot back.

Kara promptly falls backwards over the ledge, laughing. And this time you don’t feel the twinge of worry for her. Instead there’s a bloom of warmth in your chest as you lean a bit farther over the edge to watch her backflip in the air to right herself again. You lean on an elbow and crack a smile at her, and she looks up at you still giggling.

It’s all very absurd, a Luthor CEO looking down fondly at a laughing Kryptonian hovering forty stories off the ground.

Somehow it feels like being home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, or on tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy international women's day, here are the best two women in the show interacting, you're welcome!

Your mother never liked Cat Grant. You think it was mostly an old money/new money thing, but on the edge of it, you’ve always wondered if maybe your mother was envious. Cat doesn’t have a family legacy to live up to, or a hostile public to placate. She does what Lillian always wished she could do: shape the public without it shaping her in return.

So, when Cat Grant invites you to CatCo for a private chat, you say yes.

CatCo’s floors are designed to let in as much California sunshine as possible. You step out of the elevator on the top floor, headed to Cat’s office, and are immediately bathed in the sunlight glinting off a garish pink panther statue. Even for Cat, it’s a little on the nose, all dominant claw and fang wrapped up in a pretty pink package.

You draw stares and murmurs as you exit the elevator lobby toward her office, but that’s nothing new. No Luthor has set foot in any major publication’s building since Lex’s breakdown, after all.

Not that you can exactly blame the papers for that.

“Lena Luthor, as I live and breathe,” Cat says when you’ve barely crossed the room’s threshold. Immediately the path between the two of you clears, the room going silent. High noon at the local paper, it’s all very cliché. You smile thinly and shake your head, the click of your quick steps echoing in the quiet as you approach her.

“It’s been a while, Cat,” you say. And even though it has been, she looks just the same: slipped snuggly into a fitted blue dress, blonde waves bouncing, chunky necklace around her neck. Never a bracelet. You remember reading somewhere that she doesn’t like to jingle.

“If you’ll be so kind as to wait in my office,” she starts, then looks away from you to cast an unimpressed look around the bullpen. “It appears my entire staff has reverted on the evolutionary timeline back to gaping-mouthed fish.”

There’s a sudden riot of movement and noise as the gathered people scramble to look busy in the wake of Cat’s glare. You give her a smile and slip past her into her bright office. Cat gives one last derisive look around the bullpen before following after you, closing her door to cage the two of you off from the rest of the floor.

Her office is something like a fishbowl. The glass wall separating it from the bullpen is thick enough to dull the sound from it significantly, but it’s still see-through. And you know that as soon as their boss’s attention is back on you, everyone else’s will be too.

“Drink?” Cat asks, striding over to the liquor cabinet on the right wall of the space. She holds up a decanter of some amber liquid. You chuckle. It’s barely eleven in the morning.

“It’s a little early for me,” you say. She shrugs and pours herself a finger or two, gestures to you to take a seat on one of her pristine white couches. You settle into one, back straight, legs crossed at the knee. It’s so bright in here it feels like the whole city is bearing witness to your meeting.

“There is never a wrong time for good whiskey,” Cat says. She rounds the couch opposite yours and takes a seat as well. Rests her glass on the coffee table between you. You get the distinct impression that you’re sitting for an exam. You don’t look at the cup on purpose, and smile thinly.

“Results may vary,” you say. You do not let your eyes flicker to the glass between you. Cat Grant may think her self-made story gives her an edge, but Lillian Luthor made you.

_Luthors do not play the games of lesser people._

An ugly sentiment, but it serves you here.

“I have a proposition for you,” Cat says after another beat, when your refusal to break either eye contact or the small silence between you has answered whatever question she had been asking.

“Color me intrigued,” you tell her.

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors,” she says. She does not elaborate; she has more respect for you than that. Hearsay of Cat Grant’s flirting with retirement has been in the wind since shortly after you arrived in National City. Of course you’ve heard.

“I find rumor rather boring, myself,” you say. That raises her eyebrows, paints an impressed smile into her lips.

“Do you?” she says, searching your face. “There are such gems floating about you, though. What’s fame if you can’t indulge in the drama now and again?”

She’s probing. Questions about feeding into rumor and innuendo, an untouched glass of high-end whiskey between you. It’s how your mother used to bait your brother when she wanted something out of him. But Cat isn’t sitting across from Lex, she must realize.

“Was there a rumor in particular you were curious about?” you ask, keeping your voice airy and unconcerned. “First one’s on the house.”

“I’ve heard,” Cat says, with more delicacy than the situation really warrants. It’s not as though anyone in your family is unused to rumor, “that you’ve been getting an after-hours visitor lately. At your office.”

Your chest clenches, squeezing your heart into your throat so suddenly that you have to swallow it down. The motion of your throat gives you away, Cat’s eyes darting there quickly before she smiles just a touch wider. Trust Cat Grant to know about what goes on 40 stories in the air. You think of Kara perched smiling on your balcony railing, her cape fluttering gently in the wind between the buildings. You think of the sun backlighting her, of the wonderful, secret bubble being with her there feels like, and you hate Cat Grant a little bit for intruding there.

The intensity of the feeling catches you a little off-guard. And before you can put the feeling away in a box, it leaks into what you say next, sharpening your words.

“I never imagined you her keeper,” you say.

“Keeper? Hardly,” Cat scoffs, matching your tone with hers, voice just a bit frigid and suspicious. “But I live here. I have a vested interest.”

It’s a step over the line, you feel. Your lip wants to curl, and you clench your teeth briefly so it doesn’t. You take a beat to tamp down the anger, and when you speak again now, it’s in a much cooler tone.

“If it were war I wanted,” you say after a moment, picking over the words carefully so that Cat can see you choosing them in real time, “there was a perfectly good one in Metropolis for me to wage.”

Cat regards you with a sharp-eyed frown when you don’t elaborate, sitting forward on her couch as she does. You keep your back straight and don’t break eye contact. If she wants a staring match, she should know that you’ve had plenty of practice looking into the sun lately.

“And what is it you _do_ want, Lena?” she asks finally. It’s still a loaded question, but at least she’s being honest now. You find that it relaxes you. Puts the sharp memory of Lex’s red sun and your hand in it just a bit farther back in your mind and clarifies the moment at the same time.

Cat doesn’t need you. She traffics in superhero stories, in presidential attacks and celebrity gossip. There’s plenty of innuendo out there about you that she’d be foolish not to print, and yet she _hasn’t been_. Nothing about you has come up at all since Kara’s first article about your detection device, and you know that a directive like that, so soon after the youngest Luthor’s journey west, had to have come from the top.

If she’s doing it to endear herself to you, well. It’s certainly not pushing you away.

“Off the record?” you ask. “Or officially?”

Cat smiles at you, impressed once again. Because you’re testing her now, trying to suss out what she really wants from this meeting. Is she looking for a quote for the first Luthor exclusive in over a year, ready to break her self-imposed L Corp embargo? Or is she digging for something deeper?

“Off record,” Cat says. She rises, then, and goes to her desk. Presses a button on the undermount, and the wall of windows that separates her office from the bullpen flash opaque. You’re sure there are myriad listening devices the button has deactivated, too.

“I’m here to prove a point,” you say, delicately. Cat regards you without suspicion but with plenty of interest as you continue: “And my point is that I’ve retired the family from fox hunting. L Corp is under new management, and the name change is just the beginning.”

Cat turns her head to look at you a little sideways, but there’s an unmistakable grin of approval tugging at her lips. She rubs the thumb of her left hand along the same ring finger, a seemingly unconscious gesture.

“If that’s the case, I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh?” you raise a brow at her with a little nod.

“I am retiring at the end of this year,” she says, almost flippant. Rumor may have been swirling for no more than a few months, but Cat has clearly been thinking about this for much longer.

“Now you’ve told me, I won’t be able to short any of your stock without running afoul of my federal friends,” you joke. Cat pins you to the couch with a victorious kind of smile.

“You won’t want to anyway,” she says. “Because I want to sell the place to you.”

“Come again?” Your mask slips now, falls to the floor and all but shatters. Your mouth opens in surprise and your brows knit together. This has to be a joke.

“If not you, then it’s going to be another of the power players in this town, and quite frankly, I don’t care a wit for most of them,” Cat gets up from the couch, and you recognize that this is supposed to be a dismissal.

“I don’t need an answer right away,” she continues. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Restore your family honor, exorcise your ancestral demons, all that bildungsroman hero’s journey nonsense, it’s all very poetic. But I’m retiring, not on my death bed. So take your time coming to grips, and when you’ve picked your jaw up off the floor, you’re welcome to any questions.”

You snap your mouth shut at that, gathering your wits back to you.

“Cat,” you swallow, set your jaw. “Cat, I don’t know anything about running a newspaper.”

“ _Newspaper_ ,” Cat laughs derisively. “I don’t run a _newspaper_ , I run a media empire. And if anyone knows how to run one of those—” she turns back to you, leans back against her desk and points at you in satisfaction – “it’s a Caesar.”

You thin your lips, because it’s clear there isn’t an argument to be made that Cat Grant hasn’t already torn to shreds. She’s ambushed you here, wins the bout, whatever you want to call it.

“You want to be the Luthor who makes nice with a Super?” she asks, and your ire flares again behind your thinned out smile, self-directed mostly for letting your guard down around a panther like this. You walked right into her cage and now you’re surprised that she’s eating your face? Amateurish. “I’m the reason she is who she is in the first place. Think about what running _my_ company would do for that aim of yours.”

Your intuition flares, going off like a bell in your brain. You narrow your eyes, trying to search Cat’s face for something you’re sure won’t be written there. If she’s prepared at all to bring up Supergirl around you, and if you’re right about what you think she knows, she will have buried the proof so far down you’d need a backhoe just to start digging for it.

But the question swirls in your brain all the way back to your office. Needles at you like a splinter you can quite pinch loose. Kara has worked for Cat for more than a year and a half now, most of that time as her personal assistant. She’d know everything about Cat by now, from her coffee order to how often she visits the dentist. But how much does the boss know about her protégé, exactly?

To whit: does Cat Grant know that Kara Danvers is Supergirl?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please yell at me in the comments, and find me on tumblr @ rainaftersnowplease.


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